ANDREW BRUTO & MONICA BASCO
A Tale With No End
Your love story doesn’t end when you get married. It doesn’t begin either. We knew this to be true when we chose the theme for our wedding. We just never wanted our lifelong journey as a couple and our fairytale-themed proposal in Paris to end.
I can still remember every detail of that day. it was just supposed to be a birthday dinner for my husband, Andrew.
But it turned out to be a magical night when he finally popped the question ”Will you marry me?” these were four life-changing words, after 12 long years as a couple.
I thought we were heading to this restaurant to have dinner but a coachman wearing a frock coat and a top hat suddenly approached us. He was in Cinderella’s carriage, which was pulled by a majestic horse, and he offered us champagne. To my surprise he also offered a chocolate shoe in my shoe size. We were asked to board the carriage and we enjoyed an hourlong ride around Paris.
I was still clueless at the time. I always knew that Andrew did not believe in proposals so I did not expect anything.
Our ride stopped at Pont Alexandre III Bridge with the Eiffel Tower in the background and he goes down on one knee in the most romantic city in the world.
With all the people witnessing the proposal it was hard to take it all in at first, but I just let loose and enjoyed the moment. After the proposal, I lea that Andrew planned everything for more than a year with his best man.
We wanted our wedding have this modern fairytale vibe but didn’t want it to be over the top. My soon-to-be husband Andrew is based overseas, so we hired a coordinator to help us plan. A long-distance relationship is hard but planning a wedding from afar is even harder.
We took more than a year to plan our wedding. With both of us being from Albay, it was an easy decision to choose Stella Maris Chapel in Misibis
Bay Resort. The chapel sits on top of a hill with a panoramic view of the sea. It was very simple and elegant with its high ceiling, adorned with chandeliers that suited our theme. As a teenage girl, when I first visited the place, I just fell in love with it and imagined that one day, just like in fairytales, a rince harming would come and ask me to marry him there. years later, that fantasy came true. For the other elements of our wedding,
our modern fairytale theme. For our wedding cake, we ditched the traditional and opted for a sand castle inspired wedding cake. It was a first for our supplier to did an amazing job. We had our wedding invitations also customized to a fairy tale theme.
Andrew and I both wrote our own vows, which made the ceremony more personal. We vowed that our story will be the greatest fairytale ever. We didn’t break down in tears like other couples, but it was still the one of the most memorable moments for us. Andrew always keeps his emotions in check, which made it even more special to hear him say the words that he had specially prepared for me to hear that day.
Still, you really cannot plan for everything. It was supposed to be a garden wedding reception, but since the weather was not really on our side, we had to move our reception to the function hall at the last minute. Some flights even got delayed and on the day of our wedding, it was getting stormy. But we did not let the weather dampen our magical wedding and the rest of day went as planned. We had our fairytale and we made it as magical as we’d hoped it would be.