we have been discussing the physical arrangements of our venue with balay kandila for months. a few months back, we already agreed on how to hide the wall treatments at the fontaine room that rey hated - we'll drape curtains on the wall treatments and adorn it with hanging paper cranes, glass bubbles and paper cranes inside glass bubbles. ronald already showed us the samples of his glass bubbles a few months back. i also had a good idea on how the stage will be decorated - we'll have hanging lanterns for our backdrop and we'll have balay kandila's pillar vases on the lower corners. for the cake table, we'll place the cakes on top of ice columns. but ronald and i were stumped on the centerpieces. we just know that he'll have to use the burgundy charger plates that i delivered to him a few months back (rey and i are tired of the mirrors.)
ronald scheduled us for a mock-up yesterday, at 10 am. despite the fact that we were out late the night before (we attended feli's wake) and that i didn't get much sleep because i had a major headache and an irritating cough, we decided to push through with the meeting.
rey and i were 2 hours late so we had to wait for ronald to finish his meeting with his other clients. we used the time to poke around his workshop - rey and i enjoyed watching his workers make and decorate metal backdrops and candles. they were so friendly and they patiently explained what they were doing. we also made a quick tour of ronald's office and we saw how organized it was - they had a huge calendar which shows the weddings and projects that they have to attend to (their december calendar is really full!) and they have labeled envelopes for each of their clients. we were impressed.
rey and i also had fun playing with the transparent fishing pole which ronald is planning to use for our cake table.
when we saw the mock-up of our centerpiece at their little showroom, we were amazed. it was so beautiful!!! it looked really elegant and it had a little christmas-feel to it because of the bed of cypress. rey and i enjoyed playing with the little glass grapes on it. it was already perfect. BUT when we got to discuss the centerpiece with ronald, we still found ways of making it more perfect - we decided to use single long-stemmed roses instead of the generic local variety that ronald used for the mock-up (they really ask their clients to provide the flowers) and we will be placing real burgundy-colored grapes on top of the glass grapes in between the silver candle and the bud vase. and when i mentioned that i had a roll of thick burgundy ribbons at home, ronald said that he can use it instead of the foil that he used for our burgundy candle.
after discussing the centerpiece, ronald also showed us the fabric that he will use to hide the wall treatments at the fontaine room. rey loved the fabric!
we also discussed ways of incorporating paper cranes inside their pillar vases. we had fun brainstorming on how we can keep the paper cranes from getting soggy as they will be floating inside huge vases with the long-stemmed burgundy roses.
tisha, ronald's wife, joined us after we finished discussing the details and showed rey some albums of their work. we gushed over some of the pictures and ronald and tisha shared stories on how they began, how ronald slept in his car during the w@w 5 and how some cramming customers and not-so-alternative-venues gave them so much stress. we also got to talk about our wedding details and how i got crazy getting 3 photographers when we only have 58 guests.
we were so engrossed that when we left, we realized that we were in balay kandila's office for almost 4 hours!
as soon as we left balay kandila, my headache and cough returned but i still went to makati as i had to finish revising a contract for one of the firm's partners. i was able to sleep in the car but i felt that all my energy evaporated with the heat. i just made myself feel better by looking at the pictures of our centerpieces.
at the end of the day, i was tired and sick and looked awful but none of that mattered. i was on a high!
******
other details of our meeting with balay kandila -
rey was so set on not spending so much on flowers for our wedding but after seeing the mock-up of the centerpieces, he volunteered to find "perfect" long-stemmed roses.
when i was telling rey that i wanted a cream puff tower for our cake table, he said that we should think about it first as it would only be an added expense. but when i told this to ronald, ronald casually mentioned that he was just about to ask us if the cream puffs can be assembled into cubes. rey immediately told him that we will be having cream puffs and that he will try to ask dulcinea to make cream puff cubes.
i was horrified when rey asked ronald if he can install a static electricity ball on our table so we have something to amuse ourselves with during the wedding dinner.
rey and our hanging paper crane inside balay kandila's showroom
1 comment:
hi, monet!
thanks.
charger plates are replacements for placemats. they're giant plates where you put on your regular plates. i think they're useless as placemats but they're nice to use for centerpieces!
abie
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