Got married to the Doctor! Part 3: the church, food, cake, and flowers

Wedding venue was Nuestra Senora de Gracia Parish in Guadalupe Viejo, Makati AKA the site of almost every telenovela wedding ever. Despite its stately facade, NSDG is actually smaller on the inside. Seating capacity is around 200-230 people (5 people/pew X 2 pews/row X 20 rows) with a relatively short aisle: save the long train for a different church.

Our reception was in the garden of the Monasterio de Guadalupe next door. The garden is in the middle of the monastery and with some planning, was able to accommodate 2 long tables, 21 round tables, 2 buffet setups, the couple setup, the band stage, the projector screen, and the TARDIS.

The monastery let us use their airconditioned library (where I got my makeup touched up and stored the wedding cake) and their non-airconditioned recreation room (became the storage area for our suppliers). The monastery has toilets on the first floor for visitors but since their staff don’t maintain those during events, my ninang (who operates a restaurant maintenance company) hired two staffers to keep the toilets clean and restock toilet paper throughout the reception.

Weekend weddings are scheduled for 2:00 pm and 4:00 pm, while the garden can host one event per day.

Our wedding reception was catered by Hizon’s Catering. They weren’t the least expensive of the caterers we canvassed (that would be Josiah’s), but Hizon’s food tasted the best. Considering how much our families love to eat, we opted to pay a bit more to get better food. We went for their mid-range package but because of our guest count (we paid for 230 guests), we were able to negotiate for additional concessions. The food was tasted great, their service was generally excellent, and their table setups were gorgeous (see the photos!), though there were some confusing moments at the start after the Sales contact (Maricon) turned me over to the Event Planner (Drew). It felt like Maricon did not brief Drew about our agreement, as Drew asked us about our food selections and other details even though we’d already settled that with Maricon. For example, Drew had us choose between the beef dish and the pork dish (which is their standard package) when Maricon had already agreed that we would get both as part of our package. Also, the list of dishes that Drew asked us to choose from was different from the list of dishes provided by Maricon. Anyway, it was easily solved.

I’d initially wanted sunflowers for the table centerpieces (sunflowers are my favorite and hey, Vincent and the Doctor) but they were too expensive so I asked Hizon’s to use gerbera instead. They did a great job 😀

There was also an issue about some of our guests saying that they didn’t get enough food (they weren’t able to have the roast beef and pork belly), which was weird since the number of guests who arrived was less than the number we paid for. After talking to Drew, our mothers, and some friends about it, it seems like the lack of food stemmed from more people lining up at one buffet line compared to the other and the staff at the full buffet line not redirecting the guests to the other line to get more food.

Our timey-wimey Doctor Who cake was done by Earnest Bakes, with cake by Earnest Zabala and fondant cake decorations by Jovan de Ocampo. It was a two-tier cake: chocolate cake with caramel filling for the the bottom tier, carrot cake with cream cheese for the top tier, and buttercream frosting for both. Adrian requested for the carrot cake because the chocolate was too sweet for him. The cake turned out AMAZING. First and foremost, it was delicious. I’d tasted Earnest’s calamansi cupcakes before and loved them so I was confident in getting her to bake our wedding cake. Second, National Artist for Wedding Cakes Jovan de Ocampo designed it 😛 Adrian and I agreed that we wanted the cake to have a galaxy design then have the TARDIS on top, with topper me hanging on to the TARDIS while topper Adrian is hanging outside the TARDIS. Adrian initially wanted to use his figures as the toppers (more detail that way) but Jovan dissuaded us as she’d have to cover the figures’ bottoms with plastic and construct food-safe stands for the figures. Aside from giving us just what we asked for, Jovan went a step further and made the TARDIS topper’s door open AND she added the TARDIS interior by printing on food-safe paper. The whole cake seemed to pretty to eat but of course we still ate it. It was delicious.

Note: the wibbly-wobly fondant was because of the heat. Jovan put the cake out but it got so hot that the fondant started to soften and sag under the weight of the cake. The cake was moved inside the airconditioned monastery library and was only brought out just before the start of the reception.

We got our flowers from Dangwa Flower Shop which we booked during a bridal fair. I DON’T RECOMMEND THEM. AT ALL. I repeat, DON’T BOOK THEM. Yes, they were the lest expensive florist we found but their price wasn’t that far from other shops.

Reason 1: lousy customer service. I scheduled to see mockups of our church and bouquet arrangements two weeks before the wedding. I also called the shop to confirm the appointment and they said yes. When my mom and I got there, surprise! There were no florists in their shop because they were all at various bridal fairs! The woman manning the shop said that their florists did not endorse anything to her. She asked us to come back another time. HELL NO! I’d specifically scheduled the appointment when I had available time. She attempted to reassure me by showing photos of their previous projects. I believed her. I wish I hadn’t.

Reason 2: lousy arrangements. Out of everything we ordered – the bridal bouquet, maid of honor bouquet, wrist corsages, flower baskets and headdresses, buottonneires, and church aisle – the only one I didn’t have a problem with were the boutonneires and the maid of honor bouquet.

The bridal bouquet was supposed to have sunflowers and blue hydrangeas. They replaced the blue hydrangeas with statice, which would have been fine had the statice been blue instead of violet. Whoever heard of a purple TARDIS? When I called the shop to complain about the colors. they insisted that the statice were blue.

The ribbons for the wrist corsages, flower baskets, headdresses, and church pew arrangements didn’t match. The ribbons were supposed to be royal blue but for some reason, the Dangwa Flower Shop decided that the entourage flowers should have aqua and yellow ribbons instead. They were hideous. I could have lived with royal blue and yellow ribbons but no, it had to be aqua. The saving grace is that the florist sent another person to change the ribbons to royal blue and white.

The flowers they used were near the end of their usefulness. The only arrangement that lasted throughout the wedding and reception was my bridal bouquet. All of the other arrangements were losing petals left and right, to the point that my now sister-in-law’s sunflower corsage had lost 2/3 of its petals by the time the wedding started. One of my bridesmaids’ sunflowers was bald by the end of the wedding. The church pew arrangements looked sad and unkempt, plus they used plastic ribbons instead of satin ribbons.