What a way to entertain the guests right before the newly-minted Mr. & Mrs. make their Grand Entrance at the wedding reception!

The couple is Errol Aricheta + Aubrey Carampel (yes, the bride is the showbiz reporter for GMA News). They got hitched December 17, 2011 at Sta.Rita de Cascia in QC and the reception was in White Space in Pasong Tamo, Makati. Not pedicab-able. No, not by long shot. This video was edited by wedding videographer, Stephen Prado.  He co-directed this with Cesar Apolinario — also a Kapuso reporter.

ENJOY!

Big budget or small budget. Your choices are endless. Indeed, it’s more fun in the Philippines!

That’s the line that struck me in the email inviting us to witness first-hand a mass wedding organized by a Christ-centered development organization.  KMBI (Kabalikat para sa Maunlad na Buhay, Inc.) helps in transforming lives in poor communities and develop its human resources by providing sustainable micro-finance, training, and demand-driven non-financial services.

Although we couldn’t come due to a previous commitment, we asked them to tell us how the day went by sending us their story and some images after the event.

Wedding was set last June 25 (Saturday), the day Typhoon Falcon stormed Metro Manila. The flooding around the venue made up for some very interesting wedding pictures.

Here’s their story…

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Rain and floodwater did not stop them! 563 couples in 66 branches nationwide exchanged vows and tied the knot despite of Falcon’s raging winds and rain as KMBI spearheaded its annual mass wedding.

“Malaki ang tulong nito. Una, spiritually blessed ka ng God, blessed ka ng minister, blessed kang society… so malaki ang benefit nito,” says Mr. Joel Clavecilla, branch manager of Tandang Sora, Quezon City.

It was an emotional, spiritual and fun-filled event as the couples made a covenant before men and God in the sanctity of marriage. Couples from Valenzuela branch even had to ride on a truck and pedicab, with the brides’ wedding gowns safely kept in a plastic bag, just to make it to the venue.

For some, it was a dream come true as some couples had concerns as to what kind of wedding and church they would attend because of difference in religious beliefs.

Ronalyn Marino, a program member from Tandang Sora and a Catholic, who got married to Radia Solaiman Disomimba, a Muslim, said that she’s grateful because KMBI has prepared an ecumenical wedding for couples like them aside from the financial support it gave for the wedding.

“Maraming problem – sa religion, sa family. Ngayon, binigay sa amin ng KMBI ang pagsasama na tiyak para sa Kanya. Para maging legal ang pamilya namin, maging legal yung pagsasama namin.” Ronalyn and Radia already have a child.

The ecumenical mass wedding was joined by couples of different spiritual background and orientation who have been living together and most already have children. This is one of the organization’s major activities that are being taken care of by the Transformation Department. It aims to reach one of the components of its SEES (Spiritual, Economic, Environmental, Social) program, which is to draw people near to God and have a deeper relationship with Him.

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MABUHAY ANG BAGONG KASAL!

Soon-to-weds welcome the newest member of their wedding entourage, and the role is not for the faint-hearted.  Here’s an excerpt from the New York Times:

For her otherwise traditional Filipino Catholic wedding last October in Mountain View, Calif., Jen Fernando chose her friend Sean Hopkins, 37, to be the “flower fella.” “She thought it was the perfect way to represent our friendship because it was totally our sense of humor,” Mr. Hopkins said. “When it had to be approved by the priest, I thought that would be it, but he was tickled by the idea.”

The crowd at St. Joseph, a Roman Catholic church, cheered as Mr. Hopkins tossed silk rose petals onto the carpeted path from an onion-shaped basket wrapped in silver ribbon. “I was nervous,” he said. “When I took the first petals out, I saw my hand shaking and I heard whispers, but then everyone started laughing so I could let go.”

As gender roles in weddings have gradually blurred, it is less rare for the bride and bridegroom to have opposite-sex attendants or so-called honor attendants.  The gendered wedding is breaking down, which is allowing heterosexuals to play with the stereotypes in a way they didn’t have permission to do before. Although flower men might bring on waves of laughter, they did not undermine the ritual.

You can play with the traditional mold, but in the end, you’ve had a wedding, Whether you do it on the back of a motorcycle or underwater, it’s the same thing.

Weddings were one of the last institutions to hold on to strict roles for the sexes, but that they were changing.  We continue to have the marriage ceremony, but we’re slowly changing it to represent the greater balance of the genders. It’s a significant shift to have the male be the flower girl because it introduces a male who represents gentility, flowers and femininity. It’s just another step toward the dismantling of the patriarchal formation of the marriage.

Typically, the flower girl settles for a few compliments in the bride’s shadow, so it can be tricky for a man to manage the task without upstaging the bride. [READ FULL STORY]

Trash-the-dress is a post-wedding pictorial session where the bride literally gets down & dirty in full bridal frou frou.  It’s not for everybody, especially those who are quite sentimental about their couture bridal gowns.

The trash-the-dress pictorial featured below is inspired by the horror-survival video game “Left 4 Dead.” Here’s the action-packed, movie poster-treatment in one shot:

Photographer Jervy Santiago said Ingle & Aimee are big fans of the game. Props to Jervy and his team from Visionary Photo Hub for doing styling and production design in this pictorial complete with costume, props and prosthetics.  The whole thing actually played out like stills from a movie shoot.

The concept is so unique, it was even featured in kotaku.com - an online gamer’s guide based in the US.

As with every story, there is a mandatory parting-shot of our protagonists….

See the whole set from this trash-the-dress session.