the fiance

.... came home from happy hour with the boys to have dinner with me.

love is in the little things

today i got an email from Stan

From: Stan
Subject: Wedding ticket for going home

i got so kilig reading the subject line for some reason :)

120 days and counting to our wedding day and i'm furiously hammering away at my keyboard trying to make a comprehensive wedding website for our guests, which by the way turned out pretty ok. www.mywedding.com/stanandchez

on the other end of the couch, stan is also furiously hammering away at his iPad trying to kill all the zombies and protect all his plants from being eaten.

somewhere between "babe, do you think this sounds ok" and "let's rock mother f*%c!KerS!!", we've found our happy middle.

save the date!

finally!! after months of floating around in the idea pool, we've finally come to a decision. October 22 2010 Boracay!!

getting the ball rolling

after calculating how much real time i have left till our wedding, i felt a nauseating wave of panic. i have about 7 months to go but after factoring in all my future travels, stans future travels, weekends you wanna slack off and do nothing, holy week, hung over from holy week - week, and days when you're just too busy to do anything for your wedding, i think i have about 5 months of real planning time left.

i spent today scouring cebu for suppliers, making calls, getting quotes and practicing my bambi eyes for when i need to "pressure" stan into doing something. i think guys have an entirely different perception of how much work you need to do to make sure the wedding doesn't fall apart. i've booked my entire week next week to meet suppliers for our wedding and hopefully get somewhere significant with the planning.

my goal is to have everything done by september so i can sit back, relax and let my hair down for the pre-wedding parties.

i do.. i do believe in miracles!

however tragic last week was, this week was equally as miraculous. after having practically my whole life pulled out from underneath me in a day, the universe has somehow made itself right again.

i'm having coffee with my mom last tuesday and the cellphone that i'm temporarily using rings. i answer it and it's my old school's secretary saying that someone recovered my bag and what's left of it. ms. naomi excitedly gives me the number of the person to call and my initial reaction is "this is a joke, right?". anyway, i call and apparently a waitress sees my bag left a table where she works. she picks it up and calls every number on my stuff hoping to find someone that could track me down. it takes about a week from when i lost my bag to do so but i got all my important things like my IDs, my license and a couple of my personal stuff in my bag back.

the next day, someone also gives me a call saying that he picked up mischief and took her in. he saw the poster that i put up all around the neighborhood and on the main street outside out house and decides to give her back to us. he returned her smelling good, with a new collar and a leash and looking like she's been fed quite a lot the past week she was missing.

i just couldn't believe it! one miracle after another. it sounds like a fairytale but it's absolutely true. i think i'm truly blessed. it sounds amazing how my things somehow made it back to me and i can only credit God for being gracious enough to pull me out of sorrow.

when it rains it pours... :( lunchtime. had my entire bag taken from me right under my nose. i had just come from the airport so most everything near and dear to me was in there. i'm wallet-less, cellphone-less, money-less, i've lost a makeup brush i stashed in my bag, my favorite lipgloss, my ipod, my ATM card and the new credit card stan gave me for valentines. i spent the whole afternoon canceling cards and digesting my loss. dinnertime, i come home to find my pet of 10 years missing. mischief didn't come to greet me at the door so i asked the helper to go get her. only then do they discover that she's not in the house anymore. we look outside the village hoping she snuck out while the gate was open but to no avail.

devastated is an understatement. the life has literally been sucked out of me.

stan was never a fan of valentine's day and neither am i so when Vday was caught in between my makeup class schedule in manila, i didn't even think twice about having to spend it apart from stan. he was already making a trip to manila a few days before Vday so i'd see him for a few days there and by the time Vday came, i'd just have a few more days till i'd be done with the course and fly back to cebu.

surprise surprise when stan said to go home for valentine's day weekend. he even made a production out of it by dressing up as touristy as we could and sneaking into shangri la to unwind at the beach, since i was complaining about not having seen the sky or anything remotely resembling nature in manila for the past 2 weeks. after that, we'd indiscreetly check into marco polo and spend the night ordering room service instead of stressing out over traffic and crowds since i was complaining about that too.

i have to say, he's got so many surprises up his sleeve lately, it's so hard to walk around without heart shaped eyes and a silly grin plastered across my face all the time. i'm so happy i'm going to get to spend the rest of my life with such a wonderful person. :)

so this is what it feels like to follow a dream

i just completed my fourth day of my 13 day makeup course and boy! do i have a lot to learn! it's nice to meet other people who share the same passion i do. i have a great teacher who isn't stingy with tips and provides us with a great learning environment. we have a whole arsenal of makeup and brushes to play with and new faces to practice on everyday.

the first day was frustrating, i couldn't believe it took me almost 2 hours to perfect just putting on foundation. the second day almost made me cry because my model looked like she had bruises instead of a contoured face. the third day was a disaster when my model's foundation started to turn dark orange because she had acidic skin. but what can you do right but learn from your mistakes, push on and do better the next day, right? so my inner sacred hearter tells me.

today was better as my teacher nodded in approval as i produced a perfect maquillage du jour, otherwise known as "day makeup" on my model. (yes, my school goes by snooty french terms). tomorrow will be night makeup and i've asked a friend to model thus upping the pressure by a notch. there's so much to learn and i'm trying to drink it all in. i do feel pretty much myself again, working with my hands and with colors and textures. i go home excited to try again even if i failed miserably at the task assigned.


yay! :)

mid afternoon musings

i don't know what it is about girl powow lunches that make you feel instantly better. perhaps it's the ability to laugh about something with someone you've been analyzing in your head the previous night or maybe it's the caffeine and sugar fix of a shared dessert (it's twice the fun but half the calories! ) that makes your issues suddenly melt away and you leave feeling quite empowered.

had lunch with maya this week and it was a welcome breath of fresh air. it's been a juggling act of things to do, stuff to remember and people to please the past few weeks so just to hang loose and laugh over issues and non-issues was a welcome break.

i resolve never to be too "married" for girl "dates". :)

:)

yes... i'm blogging at 2:49am in my jeans, halter top, makeup and half-baked sobriety. i'm so elated to have spent a few hours with ren whom i've missed so so terribly that i just have to pen it down for posterity's sake. new issues, new chapters but we'll forever be the same wavelength about things. i'm so glad to have heard her infectious laughter and be finishing each others sentences after a pretty long hiatus. there are a million things swimming around in my head right now but my makeup is begging to be removed so i shall retire for the night and blog about at a saner hour.

according to theknot.com...

engagement squabble #1: we just got engaged and i'm itching to plan the wedding and suddenly he doesn't seem to care... what's wrong??

well, according to theknot.com (yes, i sometimes resort to self-help stuff) it's usually the bride who comes off the newly engaged cloud and itches to start pegging a date, planning the dress, calling up the caterer and dreaming up the wedding day. on the other hand, the groom seems to be almost aloof all of a sudden about the wedding plans. you must remember that it was the groom who did all the proposing ergo the planning that came with it. he's probably not up to do any major planning anytime soon and would just like to bask in the newly engaged glow. the bride on the other hand feels like a new chapter has just opened up and thus planning the wedding will ensue soon after the engagement.

theknot.com's advice: give him a little time to relax and enjoy the triumph of having you say "yes!" sooner or later, he will come off the cloud (probably later than you will) and will participate or at least give some semblance of planning the wedding/ pegging the date. don't forget that the reason he proposed was to marry you in the end.

so there you have it and it actually makes sense. i guess if i had to plan an elaborate proposal i'd be in no rush to plan another big event. i'll just have to find an outlet for my excitement like blogging or scrapbooking instead of nagging him to peg a date and decide already. it will come in its own time, just like everything usually does between stan and me. at least when he does want to talk about it, i'll have all the details ready and we can just pick off whatever i've prepared.

i'll give him till mid feb (when i come home from makeup school) to stay in his cloud.

10.something.10

stan and my future in-laws didn't like the idea of a december wedding because...

1. they don't wanna wait that long
2. it's a really busy month for everyone especially retail

well, time to pull my head out of the clouds and peel my eyes away from the ring on my finger and get cracking. according to my calculations, thats about 6 months planning left... jan - october minus february when i'll be in manila concentrating on makeup school and possibly a few weeks in may when i go to vancouver for a makeup convention.

checked out Shang.. prices are pricey... sigh...

its about to be official

stan's parents arrived from canada today and i saw his mom for the first time since we got engaged. she seemed happy inspecting my ring and reporting how they reacted to the news of our engagement. she also happily added that she and stan's dad have been fervently praying for us to finally make a commitment and were thrilled that their prayers have been answered. "i've learned that God answers prayer in His own time." tita Helen said as she squeezed my hand.

she also proceeded to tell me that she would like to invite my family for dinner on Sunday night. i guess this is what you call the pamanhikan? that'll be a bit nerve-wracking for me. 5 years of eating dinner with stan's family still hasn't made me comfortable enough to initiate conversation with them at the dinner table. and i wonder what we're going to talk about. hopefully nothing too intimidating.

oh.. and i've also decided to document as much of my engagement as i can. i want to "savor the process" as one of stan's good friends advised me to do. bridal magazines - here i come! :)

when's the date?

my answer: none yet. why? you might ask. after waiting soooooo long for this, you would probably expect me to be rushing to set a date and close the deal already.

i still like the way things are between us except i have the comfort of knowing that one day (for sure) i'll get to wake up and sleep in his arms every day. i like looking at the ring on my finger and grinning ear to ear without having to worry if the caterer's been followed up or if the dressmaker can interpret my dream dress into reality. i like browsing at invitation designs and not actually having to worry about who to invite.

it will come though... slowly the details and the pressure will build again and it's back to the drawing board with a new deadline. for now, i want to savor a few more days of being romantic about it without too much of reality setting in.

happily ever after

i've rehearsed this scene a million times in my head but nothing quite prepares you for when he actually slips the ring on your finger. i'm still in shock that this is all happening for real. stan and i are actually going to live happily ever after.

ren, been trying to reach your phone but to no avail. have you changed numbers or something? hehe call me. :)