Brace yourselves – big, blatant plug coming right up.

The fruit of 4 months of blood, sweat, and carpal tunnel: WE2 is out! Yay!

TWO gorgeous covers, ONE fabulous issue!
Click on image to enlarge. Photography by Toto Labrador, background illustrations by Arnold Arre, styling by Kenneth Chua, gowns by Mitzi Quilendrino (green cover) and Michi Calica (pink cover).

Because I work from home, I didn’t get to see the printed product until a couple of days ago. I do love how the covers turned out so I just had to hug our very hard-working EIC Marbee for making sure they got printed beautifully.*

*In this country, graphic artists rarely get to exercise creative freedom when it comes to commercial endeavors so I’m really really grateful to Sesame Seed for not setting limits on my passion for design.

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My Arn also had another collaboration with photographer Andrew Contreras and this time it was for a fashion spread with a theme close to my heart – Broadway musicals! Shei, of course!, wrote the beautiful copy that accompanies it.

A taste:

My Fair Lady

Once on this Island (the pretty gown, by the way, is a Tippi O. (: )

Miss Saigon

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Highlights of the issue:
– Inspirational Reception Ideas from real couples.*
– Secrets to Big Day Savings.
– Upcoming Suppliers.
– Florist Robert Blancaflor’s Portfolio.
– Alternative venues and a comparison matrix.
– A groom’s section.
– Donita’s New Singapore Home.

*Special thanks to my friends Rache, Apes, Tin, Pazette, Emil, Eric, Toto, and Pia for sharing their thoughts and photos. (:

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If you can spare P250, pretty please do get a copy. I assure you it’ll be worth every penny. (:

Seven years ago, I had a crazy urge to study graphic design abroad*. RISD was on my shortlist but it was all the way in Rhode Island (duh!), ergo, out of the question. If I had known that their graduates would be making these cool objets d’ art in their mission to further cultivate the study of design, then maybe my decision would’ve been different.

“Hourglass Clock”

12″ Ruler Bracelet

Tote bag

Children?¢‚Ǩ?°?É‚Äû?ɬ??¢ÀÜ?°?É‚Äò?¢ÀÜ?°?Ǭ•s chairs

*Parsons was the answer because (1) they offer excellent one-sem design courses; (2) it was just ONE subway ride away from my Tito Kenneth and Tita Rose’s place, and they had generously invited me to stay with them; (3) the Campus was near the Theatre District which meant that I could watch a musical (or twelve) on my way home if I wanted to.

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Holy cow, I just realized that I’ve been blogging for 4 years already. Back when I started, there were only a handful of bloggers from Manila, and Blogger, Pitas, and Greymatter were the only blog tools available. How blogs multiply as time flies! Now, I can’t even visit all the sites I wanna visit in one go because it would take a week to finish reading them all.