Melissa and Ulysses were married in Davao City in The Philippines. Their wedding was themed around the bride’s favourite things – watercolour and origami. The main colours used were pale teal, yellow and coral.
“I was inspired by modern origami”, she said. “Originally I wanted everything to be origami but with the time constraint and limited materials I focused on the flowers and butterflies. I love making origami and although I already knew some basic designs, I learnt way more for the wedding. We hired a wedding coordinator to help us decorate the venue and so I also taught her to make origami butterflies. She is the one who made our origami flower bouquets.”
“The colour scheme and origami might not be a new thing when it comes to weddings, but as I do graphic design for a living, instead of going for a crafty DIY paper theme I envisioned it that it would look clean and modern. I also designed all the stationery. My sister works for an animation studio so she drew all the illustrations.”
The bride wore a dress made for her by Ross Sevilla. “On my wedding gown I had hand-painted butterflies with colour swirls. I also wore a birdcage veil which I added origami butterflies to. I have naturally black hair but I really wanted a candy colour hue for my wedding. I was very happy with the mermaid-like result, which contrasted really well with my short birdcage veil.”
The ceremony was held in a local catholic church. “My favourite part of the day was walking down the aisle”, she said. “I could see everything had come together and it was so wonderful to see our family and friends there. I specially loved how Uly looked at me and that it was the beginning of a new chapter in our lives. I was really happy, relieved and a little bit nervous.”
“After the ceremony everything seemed like a blur. There was another scheduled wedding right after us so we had to rush all the group photos, but after that we went to a park for our portraits, which was fun. The photos look so cool but it was so hot and humid that day! After the photos we finally arrived in the reception. We had only 80 guests which is really small for a Filipino wedding and I was so happy to see our family and friends.”
“I would say to other couples planning their weddings that on the day don’t stress about the small details”, she concluded. “Be at the moment. The wedding is not about the dress, the décor or the food. It’s really about the start of your marriage and living the rest of your lives together.”
