Expenses,expenses

If a couples wants to get married but don't have enough savings to spend for a church wedding, you can have a civil wedding first while preparing and planning for your church wedding maybe after a couple of years. It still advisable that a couple will still be married in church specially if both of you have the same religion.

Expenses in civil wedding is less expensive compare to a church wedding. If you want to have a simple civil wedding, you will only spend 10,000php to 15,000php. If you want to have an unforgettable civil wedding you might spend up to 100,000php, still not that expensive right?

There are only few things that are necessary for you prepare for a civil wedding.

Documents - birth certificate,CENOMAR, Pre-marriage counseling certificate, Marriage license, these are the required documents before you can apply for a civil wedding. You will be spending P1,000 - 2000 for those. If you have atleast 2 months to prepare for your wedding, I suggest that you take care of all the documents that you need, it will save you almost P50%.

Wedding Ring - its really up to the couple on how much they want to spend for their ring. Some just settle for a silver ring that cost 2,000 for a pair of ring, some prefer a white gold ring ranges from 5,000-10,000, some prefer a ring with diamond stone ranges from 20,000-40,000, and some wants to have a platinum ring with diamond that costs P28,000-50,000.

Reception - if you want to have the most simple wedding, just invite your witnesses and your immediate family. I'm pretty sure that your friends will understand you guys if you can't invite them. You could just held your reception at any restaurant. I strongly suggest to held your reception at restaurants that offer buffet meals. Your guest will surely enjoy the choices of food at the same time you will know right away how much you will be spending as long as you stick to the number of guests you will invite. Buffet meals ranges from 280-600 depending on the restaurant.

Clothes - compare to a church wedding that you have to spend a good amount of money just for your gowns and coat or barong, in civil wedding you could just spend 5,000 - 15,000 for your clothes (bride & groom). Ladies, you don't have go wear gown, an elegant cocktail dress will do. Try to hunt dresses at Greenhills for a good price and quality dress if you're tight budget. Dresses in Greenhills only costs P500-1,000. Nice cocktail dress are also available at Sari-sari, Cinderella, forme, SM deparment store and Robinson's department store. Among those stores that I mentioned, i recommend Robinson's department store. They have wide ranges of clothes that you can choose from and the price is just right. If you shop in the mall, dress will range from 1,300 - 10,000.

For guys, a polo and slacks will do for your wedding. I like the design and print of Links available at Greenhills. Their polo is only for P650 but you could get it for 500.00. Slacks will range from 800-3,000. I suggest you buy a good quality slacks, anyway you could wear it in any occasion also at the office.

Some things that you don't need to spend money....

Photos - of course you still want to capture every good moment on your wedding day. You don't have to spend anything for your photos. Maybe one of your relatives or friends is incline into photography,why not invite that person to your wedding.

Invitations & Souvenirs - a civil wedding don't really need to have a formal invitation cards to be send to your family and friends. You could just inform them or call them for invitations. A souvenir is also not a must in a civil wedding but its really up to you if you want to give something to your guests as a token for coming for your wedding.

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.