Planning Your Wedding in the Middle of a Pandemic

There's no stopping love. When you want to spend the rest of your life together, a pandemic won't be able to stop it. Our wedding back in 2009 was almost moved because we were both affected by Typhoon Ondoy and Typhoon Pepeng. Both our homes were flooded and we lost all our wedding planning materials. Our suppliers were also affected by the severe floods brought by the typhoons. But the tragedy did not stop us from our plans to wed.

A pandemic cannot stop love. If there's a will there's a way. There's always something good you can find in tragedies. This is a good time to go back to basics. A wedding is just one day to your lifetime together. Take advantage of this time to focus on the essentials. Here's a list of how you can plan for a more intimate wedding:

Your guest list - an intimate list of family and best friends, the rest can join via video call perhaps.

Wedding venue - church or chapel? 

Reception - home, restaurant or small hotel room? 

Invites/stationery - e-invite, Whatsapp/Viber?

Flowers - small venue means less flowers needed. 

Photography and videography - photo and video memories are important, perhaps consider having a smaller team. 

Music and entertainment - maybe just get a friend to do the singing or use pre-recorded music. At our wedding we did enjoy having a choir and the Manila Philharmonic Orchestra. 

Attire - shorter dresses for small weddings are in nowadays. I don't suggest also spending so much for your gowns. 

Hair and make-up - my sister did her own make-up at her wedding, but perhaps opt for a smaller team to do your hair and make-up. 

Honeymoon - there are existing travel bubbles in the country, but remember you'll need documentation and swab tests for any travel you'd like to do. 

You can copy this document to tinker with budgeting for your wedding. 

Planning Your Wedding with Family and Friends

Weddings nowadays have gotten exponentially expensive. When I was growing up there was no such thing as wedding coordinators. Whenever there was a wedding in the family it meant mobilizing everybody to get it organized. With limited budget we decided to do everything on our own with help from family and friends.

Where does one start? You need to define first what are the things that are important to you. Do you want a nice venue? Good food? Amazing wedding singers? Big church? Small church? Number of guests? For Sweetie and me we identified three priorities: (1) Wedding venue that would prevent me from having an asthma attack; (2) Good food; and (3) Musicians who can provide great OPM music. These were the non-negotiables for us so we set our wedding budget based on this (you can make a copy of the budget planner).

Homemade table decor.

Sweetie and I took care of finding the suppliers and had help from friends. And here's where they helped:

Entourage Gown Design - made by my niece Patricia
Giveaways - made by my high school friends
Choir - friends I grew up with
Priest - from our parish, I have known him since I was in high school and he was still a deacon back then
Photography - got huge discount because they are friends
Videography - a friend did the coverage, sponsored by one of our ninangs
Invitations - got huge discount from Sweetie's friend
On the day coordination - c/o a great friend from work
Missalette - made by a friend
Table decor - made by me
Message board - painted by my uncle

We also got a lot of help for legwork from family and friends. I was very busy traveling around the country during that time, but made sure to make time to plan and organize the wedding. The list kept me sane (you can start with the doc I linked above). Nowadays there are also a lot of ready to use items you can just buy off the shelf and remember, in the Philippines, there's always Divisoria!

We all want to have a beautiful wedding. It doesn't necessarily mean though that you should spend a lot for it (and you shouldn't!). For me a beautiful wedding is where you get your family and friends involved in the planning and organizing. This will allow you to also get to know each other better and make the integration less stressful. Involving your family and friends will also make them happy that they are engaged and helping you start your new life. 

Where to Start Planning Your Wedding

This is a question that my friends always ask me. After getting engaged and after going through pamamanhikan, one would realize that planning a wedding is a daunting task. It is truly overwhelming since your wedding is probably the only huge event you will have to plan in your entire life (that is if you are not a wedding coordinator or an event organizer). I always tell people that it is easier to plan an event for a couple of hundred of people than a wedding.

Anyway, have no fear since nowadays there are many tools online you can use to plan your wedding (and you can even do without a coordinator like we did!).

HAVE A CHECKLIST

The secret to organizing your wedding is to have a list. Yup, a check-list. The best check list I've used is the booklet that Wedding Essentials includes in its magazine. Just follow it diligently and you are sure to complete everything in time for your wedding.

AGREE ON A BUDGET

We scrambled around to put together a budget and plan before our pamamanhikan because we wanted to show our parents that we were prepared and serious about getting married. The booklet from Wedding Essentials provides a good run down on all the expenses that you will incur in your wedding. Things will change as you make decisions so it's best to put this spreadsheet online and collaborate by using Google Docs (helped us a lot since I live in Paranaque and he lived in Marikina).

Identify which expenses are important for the two of you. Do you want to spend more on photography and videography? The reception? Entertainers? Your wedding attire? You will have to identify which of the costs would be your "luxury cost" and which would be the least priority for spending. We personally spent a good amount of money on photography and videography and put the bridal car on least priority. We also managed to get a lot of help from friends.

START PLANNING!


Start planning months ahead. Cramming for your wedding isn't a good idea since you'd probably end up spending more. Best to start on your church, reception venue and caterer and then you can spend some time dating again till you realize that you have to start working on your wedding again.

Planning Your Wedding Online

I couldn't help but giggle over the Google Docs interface... it was just so... pink!


I previously did a wedding where both the bride and the groom were based in Singapore. I wish Google Docs was available back when we were planning things. It would've saved a lot of time and money spent for communication. What is Google Docs for anyway?

Google Docs is an online interface that allows you to collaborate in real time. It where you can create documents such as your guest list, emcee script, misalette and even your budget online and you can easily share and revise things with your fiance in real time. Check out this sample entourage and guest list spreadsheet.

It's easy to do! You can easily create it using your Gmail account, click on the "Documents" link on the upper left corner. It should go to the Google Docs interface. To create a new document, just click on "New" and select what kind of document you want to create, choose spreadsheet if you're going to make lists, or "Document" for stuff like scripts or write-ups. To allow your fiance to make inputs in the document, click on the "Share" tab which can be found on the right side and then fill-in his email address (must be using Gmail as well) and click on "Invite as collaborator". This will bring you to a notice page where you can leave a note for him and this shall be sent as an email to him and he can easily access the document.

Confused? Please check out the Google Docs tour.