admiring ads

we just bought the latest issue of wedding essentials magazine this weekend. bakit pa? mainly because of a couple of reasons:

1) the wedding industry is very interesting and we’re planning of slowly creeping into it. we just wanted to be updated on what’s the trend in the industry so that we may be more successful in our planned business.
2) we got to chat with bob just a few days back and besides a couple of exciting news (to be disclosed later 😉), we got to learn that he finally had an ad printed… in the latest issue of wedding essentials.

these reasons were enough for us to buy the mag. we were surprised by the price though… nag-mahal na pala. 😀

just browsing through the magazine, one thing strucked us both. the quality of the ads have vastly improved. though there are still clunkers, there were real winners… and 3 of our favorite suppliers had awesome ads. fol kasi don’t do print ads or else it would’ve been 4 awesome ads. 🙂


we love ads that are subtle yet visually appealing and this ad by kaye is exactly like that. we would bet that kaye herself conceptualized the ad and took this photo. she’s a photographer din kasi… a highly-skilled one. 🙂


one of the reasons we bought the mag and bob did not disappoint. bob took the minimalist approach combining a striking image with a definitive statement.


lanie took an even simpler approach. what more can be more convincing than a pretty face for a makeup artist? it would’ve been better if it’s a photo of my wife though. 😉


as you open the new mag, this 3 page series ad will be the first to greet you. seemingly a master in marketing, jason magbanua used catch phrases to promote his services.


a 4-page folded spread for photographer, lee llamas , showcasing a collection of his shots. this has got to be the most expensive ad in the whole magazine. 😀


at first glance, it seems like another wedding photographer ad with the elegant layouting. but a look closer and it’s an ad for madge , one of the more popular makeup artists.

Read Full Post »

anna’s sendoff: a night with pisay batchmates, up barkada and bob nicolas’ clients

it’s been a while since i’ve seen my friends. excluding our wedding, it’s probably been years since we’ve last spent some time together. kaya naman when anna, a pisay batchmate & college barkada, came calling regarding a “casual” dinner sendoff, we took the opportunity and made it a point to be there. eh matagal-tagal din mawawala c anna kaya dapat lang andun kami. 🙂

going there, we expected the usual… casual dinner w/ the usual faces plus lots and lots of kwentuhan… and asaran. 😆 when we arrived, something kinda hinted that it would be more than that. 🙂 the setting was definitely not casual. eh, akala namin pumasok kami sa wedding reception, eh. 😀 the food was catered, waiters were attentive, the tables had centerpieces… meron pang floating candles. anna, anna… casual pala, ha. 😉

since not everyone knows everyone at the party, anna introduced us to everyone else (us having the “they just got married” tag. 🙂). this became a recurring chore for anna for every guest that arrived. although merong time na c joyce, a pisay batchmate, ang nag-introduce sa isat-isa. 😆 just a few minutes upon arrival, kainan na agad. good thing na din because we’re getting hungry. 😀

from then on, sunod-sunod na dumating ang mga guests and soon the place was packed na. at first, guests were divided in specific groups… we were with pisay pipol, then the up pipol were in another table, then anna’s ofcmates were in another table… etc. d naman yun intentional cguro, it just so happened that way. hindi naman kasi dapat ganun if only kermin (up barkada) sat with us… kaso she soon realized it was a pisay table kaya sabi nya, “ay, this is the nerd table.” 😆 patawa ka talaga, kermin. 😀

sooner than later the “groups” broke up and then everyone started to mingle with others. we then found ourselves having a very interesting and lively conversation with someone we only met that night. charrie is anna’s ofcmate… and an indirect recipient of our email blog (anna, finding our blog useful, forwarded it to charrie, whose daughter is getting married later this year). nakakatuwa nga reaction nya when anna introduced us to her, “ah, ikaw c dyoks! i have to talk to you.” feeling tuloy namin may atraso kami. 😆 ang saya ng usapan namin. and it is very flattering din na charrie trusted so much our blog that she considered most of our major suppliers. sayang lang kasi most are booked na kaya she was only able to get bob, our videographer. eto pa sabi ni charrie, “we were supposed to get jason magbanua pero after reading your blog, we went for bob na lang.” makes me wonder, ano ba mga pinag-su-sulat namin sa blog? 😀 seriously though, we’re just satisfied and confident with our suppliers that’s why ganun mga praises na sinulat namin before para sa kanila. kaya good call, charrie. you won’t go wrong with bob. 🙂 and thanks din for trusting our blog. buti na lang responsible writers kami. 🙂

that wasn’t the only surprise of the party. early in the evening, we got to talk to rheea & gil, both pisay batchmates. they’re not new faces to my wife dahil nakita na nya sila through their wedding video. yes, pinalabas kasi part of their wedding video sa isa sa seminars namin sa church. i could remember pa nga back then noong pinalabas yun, eh. sabi ko kay selle, “eh kilala ko tong mga to, ah.” 😀 at maganda video nila, ha… menu pa nga lang, eh, pamatay na. 🙂 kaya naman instant conversation starter yung pagkapanood namin video nila. and guess what? eh, c bob din pala videographer nila, eh. ah-ah… ano ba to, 6-degrees of bob nicolas? 😆

continuing with the bob nicolas thread, later on the night we spent talking to hes (up barkada) & migs, a soon-to-wed couple na… bob nicolas clients. 🙂 nakaka2wa cla kasi 7 months pa from their big day, eh almost tapos na cla sa preps. invitations na nga lang ata kulang, eh… atsaka souvenirs. at nung tanungin kung ano color motiff nila, instead of naming out a color, eh naglabas ng swatches. 😆 ibang klase ka talaga, hes… kung sabagay, kami din naman ganun. 😀

the party wasn’t over yet pero we had to go na kasi naman ang layo pa ng tinitirhan namin. it was nice that my friends finally got to spend time with me and my wife. nag-enjoy naman asawa ko… masasaya naman kasi kadaldalan mga kaibigan ko. may topak nga lang karamihan (parang ako. :lol:) pero masasaya kausap nonetheless. 😀 anna, thanks for having this party. it was well-worth the trip all the way from laguna.


left photo:  that’s us besides charrie and more of anna’s ofcmates.  btw, to those who do not know, that’s anna sitted right in front of her mom (standing).  🙂
right photo: up barkada table.  from left to right:  fresh-from-yoga lala, 7-months-to-go-and-we’re-finished-with-our-preps hestia & migs, we’re-having-our-5th-baby goshes, i-don’t-want-to-sit-with-the-nerds kermin and of course, the-newlyweds us.  🙂

Read Full Post »

desktop project part 2

gone are the days wherein we buy those thick albums with transparent plastic film on each page. alam nyo yun? yung bubuklatin yung parang plastic cover tapos insert pic or pics then balik yung plastic cover to protect & keep the photos in place. 😆 layouting is limited in such albums… and quite tedious if you make it like a scrapbook.

good thing we are now in the digital age… and take God for photoshop 🙂 because layouting has expanded in a totally different level.

which leads us to our 2nd project regarding the photos taken by our guests. we’re making our very own wedding album. 😀

most of you know that we were very particular in choosing a photographer with not only an eye for taking fresh photos but also extraordinary layouting skills. based on what we saw (and we did see A LOT), most photographers’ layouts kasi do not standout. parang pare-parehas lang cla. common. buti na lang we bumped into fol (and we’re so excited to see how he laid-out our artbook ;-)). kaya eto kami, feeling magaling mag-layout, gumagawa ng sarili naming album. 😆

here’s a sneak peak of a spread we have done so far:


this is the very first spread we were able to make. they say that a great layout should be able to tell a story. we were blessed enough to have an image sequence in our photo collection and the layout revolved around those pictures for easier image storytelling. 🙂


here are the unedited photos used for the layout. first 3 photos by our friend vena. he was the ONLY guest to able to capture the unorthodox bridal walk. maybe it was so unconventional that most were not ready to capture the moment. 😆
the last photo was taken by our churchmate/musician friend during their practice session just hours before the event.

we’re no professionals but here is how we arrived into the final layout:
a) so that it would not look too cluttered, try to choose a single photo/image and let everything else revolve around it. in this case, we chose one of the wedding photos-of-the-day finalist.
b) for easy storytelling, succeeding photos should somehow relate to the main photo. the other 2 pictures create the bridal walk image sequence. the violin suggests the mood at the time.
c) add accents like graphics and/or text on open spaces. don’t make it to catchy as it might distract the viewer from the main image. we chose to add a sun graphic to further emphasize that it is a sunrise wedding. also, added the time during that moment for that added detail.
d) arrange the photos in such a way that the viewer’s eyes will not go all over the place. use cropping, the use of black & white images, color management and other techniques to achieve this.

that is how we came up with out layout. happy naman kami. 🙂 we still have A LOT of photos to layout kaya this will take a while. we plan to do this also for our honeymoon pictures… and other pictures, as well. 😉

Read Full Post »

desktop project part 1

remember our wedding day gimmick? the photos-of-the-day? we received tons of photos out of that… and a lot of it are keepers. 🙂
so what does one do with such a large quantity of pictures?
a) print them all and place them in an album? inside a box?
b) select a few, print them, frame them and hang them on a wall?
c) place them on an online gallery?we thought of all of these but decided no to do any of the above… for now. bakit? eh, kasi we wanted to get creative with our photos. we wanted to stretch their value. we wanted to make the most out of them.

what exactly did we have in mind?

as mentioned in one of our old postings (see photos from an amateur videographer), i am into video editing. i’ve been doing it for a while and starting to really get the hang of it. we thought, “why not make an avp out of our guests’ pictures?” oo nga naman. that would be nice plus the fact that we could included it in our thank you token… which we did. 🙂

and we had so many pictures, we decided to make 2 avp’s. 😆

here are our self-made, avp/slideshows. enjoy! 😀
this is actually the 2nd avp that was made. a fast-paced avp with a few effects.


our simulated onsite avp. 😆 i gave myself 2 hours to edit an avp from start to finish thereby simulating onsite editing. i cut myself some slack by using a very slow-paced song. 🙂 and guess what, i finished the project in less than 2 hours. pwede na mag-onsite… not! ayoko nga, kaka-pressure kaya yun. 😛
btw, the photos used here are from our non-photographer/videographer suppliers namely, mik (musician) and kaye (caterer). awesome photos must we say. 🙂

all avp’s were made using sony vegas. yah, i know. most videographers on this part of the world use premiere pro… but not me. 😀 i was introduced to video editing thru sony vegas… it was easy to use that i learned editing simply by watching someone edit thru vegas. it’s that simple. but… i might try premiere pro also in the future. 😉

Read Full Post »

archives by request

sa wakas, natapos din ang pag-migrate ng aming email blogs to this online blog. migration was not easy and not entirely successful (hirap ayusin formats. 😀) but this will do. some might be looking for the early email blogs but we decided not to post it here. that’s the first 5 email blog issues documenting how we went through the process of selecting our wedding suppliers. sobra kasi ma-detalye… including horror stories on certain suppliers. 😉

if that sounds intriguing (i bet it does. 😯)… and you really, really want to read through it, just drop us a line and we can send you a copy through email… then we can have an animated discussion after. 😛

Read Full Post »

snippets

a series of events occured lately and instead of blogging about each one at a time… we thought it would be best to just collect them all in one single photoblog.  🙂
 
snippet 1: color coordination
half a year ago, we had our prenuptial pictorial at tagaytay with fol & edong.  we were excited with our prenups so much so that we kinda “prepared” for it.  no, we didn’t bring props (though that would’ve been nice) nor did we practice poses (haha) but we did give some thoughts on what we would wear… or what color for that matter. 

prenup photos by fol rana jr (from top to bottom): 1) wearing green & cream pants at bella vista  2) wearing white top & jeans (provides great contrast with the greens)  3) wearing earth/neutral long-sleeved shirts.  note: meron pa kaming pink & black outfit that we didn’t get to use.  hehe.

fast forward to last monday.  we took a stop at atc before going to cavite (selle’s hometown).  sa sobrang wala kaming time lumabas, we have been wearing very old slippers at home.  eh, ako nga, eh pambabae pa yung gamit ko, eh… hehehe.  eh since we were in atc na rin lang, naghanap kami ng tsinelas.  and look what we got.  🙂

Read Full Post »

[groom speaks] talking about our suppliers part 3

MUSICIANS: vcf music team

CONTACT PERSON: leslie calimbas

WHAT WE WERE LOOKING FOR: string musicians willing and capable of performing not the usual wedding songs

FIRST IMPRESSION: we’ve been hearing them in church week-after-week and our musicians are truly one of the best.

HOW AND WHY WE CHOSE THEM: we really wanted live musicians for our wedding… especially for the ceremony. the price for string musicians plus their out-of-town rates though were a bit high for us. since our best man is a member of our church’s music team, he recommended the music team to play. come to think of it, it was a brilliant idea. the vcf music team knows how a Christian ceremony goes, they know how to create appropriate background music for the ceremony and they are very flexible when it comes to the type of music we wanted. at syempre, since we’re brothers and sisters in Christ, they practically played for free. 🙂

HOW THEY DELIVERED: since we’re churchmates, it was very easy to communicate with them. they updated us on how their practices were going. nauna pa sila sa akin sa venue… and they woke up very early para mag-practice pa bago pa pumunta ng bella vista. based on the bridal march (kasi eto na lang natatandaan ko… after kasi nito, wala na ako natatandaan kundi si selle at ang aming pastor. hehe), magaling talaga sila. madami din nag-comment na magaling sila as their music added to the drama and emotion of the ceremony… which is the purpose naman kung bat ginusto namin magkaron ng musicians. 🙂

and another thing, they were dressed appropriately. something we really appreciated. 🙂

vcf music team before and during performance. (photos by mike crucillo (left) and mik guillen (right))

Read Full Post »

[groom speaks] talking about our suppliers part 2

CATERER: k by cunanan (www.kbycunanancatering.com)

CONTACT PERSON: kaye cunanan

WHAT WE WERE LOOKING FOR: a caterer willing to provide customized, american-style breakfast

FIRST IMPRESSION: elegant. beyond our budget.

HOW AND WHY WE CHOSE HER: for economical reasons, we were not looking for a “name” caterer. we felt like they charge too highly and that there were many other less-known caterers who can give the same service at a more affordable cost. the search for that less-known caterer who can meet our requirement led to our longest search for a supplier. more than 2 months and 2 unsatisfactory prospective caterers later, we have yet to find a caterer. using a similar strategy used in supplier hunting, we sent an email blast to every caterer we can contact… be it a “name” caterer or not. several caterers replied but either:
a) they couldn’t provide a customized menu
b) they couldn’t match their menu to our theme. then we received a reply from k by cunanan.

this one was different because:
a) it wasn’t generic as all the others were. it was long and personalized complete with comments, suggestions, follow-up questions and even emoticons.
b) it had a menu that was highly customized and fitted perfectly to our theme.
c) the mail was not from an account executive… it was from the owner, kaye.

a few email exchanges later, we met kaye at the expo and by simply talking to her, how young, vibrant and full of fresh ideas she was, we knew we found the one. the clincher, she was able to propose a package that was within our budget… a budget that most couldn’t meet.

Read Full Post »

[groom speaks] talking about our suppliers part 1

as posted at weddings at work community board (without the pictures).

=========

a blessed day to all. this will be an extremely long read as all suppliers rating are. hopefully, this would help out all engaged couples out there… while entertaining those who are yet to be engaged or those who are married already. 🙂

==========

WEDDING DETAILS

date: january 20, 2007

ceremony time: 6:30 am

ceremony/reception venue: bella vista, tagaytay

.
VENUE: bella vista

CONTACT PERSON: deedee (mom) & sandee (daughter)

WHAT WE WERE LOOKING FOR: a garden with a view of taal

FIRST IMPRESSION: it felt like home.

from left to right: 1) ceremony at the terrace 2) post-reception shot (photos by fol rana jr)

Read Full Post »

wedding photos-of-the-day

memories of our wedding day is something we really treasure.  reliving those memories is best achieved thru photos and videos.  that’s is why we put so much importance on photography and videography at our wedding.  
but we knew that even the best photographers could not possibly capture every single moment of our wedding… there’s just too many things going on, too many people to point the lens at, too wide an area to cover.  unless they could be at multiple places at a single time, it’s just not possible.  hehe.  therefore, we devised a way wherein we could have more captured moments without hiring a backup photographer.  hence, we placed these cards at each table:
 
guests browsing thru the table cards… one of which was the photo-of-the-day table card.

with the advent of digital technology, most guests nowadays carry a camera (be it a cellphone, a point-and-shoot or even a dslr). dati, naglalagay ng mga disposable cameras per table for those additional shots.  sa tingin namin, hindi na yun applicable ngayon.  hence, the photo-of-the-day table cards.  we did get a very positive response to this and got hundred of pictures from our guests (and some haven’t sent theirs yet).  heck, even our photographer, fol, wanted to join in.  hehe.  sori, fol…  pagbigyan mo naman na guests namin.  🙂

Read Full Post »