Wedding Ring

In my opinion, if you will have a civil wedding, it would be better if you invest in wedding ring. Since civil wedding is not that expensive compare to a church wedding why not allot a chunk of your savings to your wedding ring. Also, its the sign of your marriage with your partner that you can show anytime,anywhere. You don't bring your marriage contract all the time, do you?

When we finally decided to get married, the first thing that I googled is all about wedding rings. I downloaded different pictures of rings. Originally, what I really wanted was a platinum with white gold and a small diamond stone. But I realized that its not so wise to buy a platinum ring not only because it's expensive but what made me change my mind was because its the hardest metal meaning we cannot resize it anymore just incase it won't fit to us anymore in the future. I don't have any plans to change our ring even if we have our church wedding in the future. We will still be using the ring that we will be using on our civil wedding.

There are different places here in Metro Manila and near provinces like Bulacan where you can buy cheap but high quality rings. Some of my friends suggested Binondo but I was so chicken to go there with my bf since we both don't know how to look distinguish a genuine gold/platinum ring vs a fake one. The most convenient place to buy a ring is in the mall. Most of the jewelry shope give discounts on their rings. There's one thing I found out while we were looking for a ring in the mall.... each sales person give different prices. The first shop we visited was Miladay in Galerria, I saw a pair of two toned rings with diamond and they were on sale, 30% discount. The sales lady quoated as P23kish for the pair. But since it was the first shop that we visited. I decided to look around I might see a better one.

The following week, we shopped again for a ring and saw a platinum with diamond ring also on sale but only 10% at Ocampo's, still not bad because the sales lady told me that it will only cost P28kish for the pair. Then we went back to Miladay, different sales lady assisted and I asked again for the price of the ring that I'm eyeing for...and she said its P34,000 and the 30% off was already applied on the price that she gave me. Since I felt bad for the price, I wasn't able to buy anything.

The 3rd time we went at Galleria, I was decided to buy at Ocampo's since I thought that its cheaper there. I think P28,000 platinum ring with diamond (pair) is already a good price. But, what the @#!$!.....a different sales rep assisted us and again the price went up to almost P40,000!. So I drag my boyfriend to go to Miladay again. The sales lady who first assisted us was there and she was the one who assisted us....and she gave me the same price that she told me before...so right there and then we bought the ring. We will get it on Wednesday since they still have to resized it and engraved our names.

You can also check Hearts & Arrows (their diamonds are gorgeous) and Suarez in Gateway.

Get All Documents Together

We were engaged December of 2008 but we only started preparing April because all the while I thought that a civil wedding preparation is easy and fast, but I was wrong. It took us more than a month to get all the documents we need (well, maybe it depends on every local government).

We went at the municipality office of Antipolo to check what are requirements for a civil wedding. That was somewhere around first week of April 2009. Here are the requirements:

CENOMAR - took 3 weeks before it was released and it cost P295 for each of you. (Antipolo)
But I checked on www.e-census.com.ph that it will only take 9 working days if you
will going to request it online but it cost P415.00 (shipping fee included)

Birth Certificate - we requested our birth certificate at e-census.com.ph for P315 (shipping
fee included) and it took 3 working days before we received it. I checked at the
municipality(Antipolo) it only cost P200+ but it will take 2 weeks.

Pre-Marriage Seminar - held every Friday from 8am-12nn and 1pm-5pm (Antipolo only)
you don't have to pay anything but you just have to donate any amount after the
seminar. We were there at exactly 8am but that seminar started I think 9am or
9:30 already but it finished on time.

It discussed about family planning, common problems that a married couples
usually encounter & how to manage it... things like those. Honestly, it was so hard for me and my bf to listen and focus on the discussion since we both came from work. Both of us were so sleepy and tired, but atleast we were able to finished it, hehehe. When the seminar ended, we were given certificate.

Finally we already got all the 3 most important requirements to apply for a marriage license. Since we were so tired we decided to go home and just go back Monday to apply for a marriage license.

Application for Marriage License - have 2 copies of CENOMAR and birth certificate, 1x1 ID picture with white background and of course the original copy of the documents that I mentioned earlier. Fill-out Marriage License application form (3 copies) the clerk at the municipality office will check all the information that you wrote on the form. Everything should match what's on your birth certificate. Then you need to pay P350.00 for the license. It will be released after 11 working days.

Our marriage license will be release on May 29, one more week before we could have our wedding scheduled at the city hall. Our target date is June 8...I hope we could get the date that we want.


By the way, if one of you is below 25 years old, there might be additional requirements. (Like a written consent from your parents)

So for some of you who are planning to have a civil wedding, start getting the required documents ASAP.