the obligatory valentine post

Every Valentine’s Day, I blog about love as I join the entire human race in celebrating/comprehending the difficult business of romantic love.

(My favorite posts are “undefined relationships” and “postmodern love“.)

This year, I shall skip these musings and give space to two beautiful weddings:

First is long-time friend Janette’s wedding in Bay, Laguna.

She was serene the day of her wedding and there was an aura of maturity about her. Night before her big day, another friend of ours (Kei) and I stayed overnight in her house laughing till 2am, while talking about her Mark, who loved her unconditionally to no end.

The celebration was short and sweet and private (I think there were less than 50 persons in the reception). And the couple didn’t act like they’re the most important persons of the event. They were chatting with everyone and they even ate late to serve the guests with drinks!

Lovely couple, Janette and Mark. So humble and grown up. And happy. They tied the knot not just to prove something, like out of revenge against the people who didn’t believe in them when they were in highschool. They did it because they are capable of loving.

The next wedding, my wedding of the year (2011) was that of my cousin’s Victoria Pineda to Jimel Andrade. This was at the Archbishop’s Palace in Mandaluyong.

How lucky could she get, her kuya is a priest (based in CA, USA), so come homily, the message was personalized, from the bottom of Fr. Vince’s heart.

Father also gave the couple a wonderful gift of inviting this loud person, Michael (shucks, I forgot the last name), a former seminarista, published author, wedding singer, friend to celebrities and a very very very talkative host. The reception party lasted 3 hours. Amen. But it was all fun. To cap Ate Vhec and Kuya Jimel’s ten-woohoo-year relationship.

So beautiful and perfect, everything was, I was moved to tears when Ate Vhec walked down the aisle. I was thinking, holy god, ten years. And the reception? One word: generous!

Everybody had so much fun, thanks to the organizers (the Pinedas) especially Iby, my cousin who shares my disinterest in getting married any soon, and love for a heart-warming celebration of, well, love.

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Photos of Janet and Mark taken by Katrina Ross Tan

Photos of Vhec and Jimel taken from their facebook page.

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