Fact

Fact: Rodney kisses me goodbye every morning at 6:00am as he leaves for work, even if I am asleep, even if he thinks I am asleep and I'm not.

It's Official!... well.. It's Penciled in!

My reception venue and ceremony venue are both pencil booked for November 19th, 2011! We have a date!

So I made a ticker...

Happy Holidays!

This blog is becoming less and less a resource and more about us! Geez. I'm only posting it here so that people who get in the mail will still be surprised.
Anyways, our Christmas cards arrived, so now I can finally mail them! Sorry, Philippines Shutterfly took too long, so you'll have to get your cards after the holidays. A for Effort!

Merry Christmas! Joyeux Noel! Maligayang Pasko!

Kahit Maputi Na Ang Buhok Ko

I just had to add this.
Rodney and I, after seeing this on the We Heart Wedding blog, starting checking out different Tagalog bands and songs for something that we liked that we can have somewhere in our wedding. Maybe not our first dance but that will add the feel of us. At my cousin's wedding last month, they kept their non-dancing music to jazz to set the tone of their wedding and reception. Anyways, after a couple hours of youtubing, we ended up at the same song.

So here it is.
And for my English-only friends, the title is loosely translated to "Even when my hair is white". Take a listen, and even if you don't fully understand the lyrics, you'll get the feeling.

The Fairy Godmother Coordinator

Wednesdays is Wedding Wednesdays on my favourite channel Slice. Part of why I love this channel is its abundance of wedding shows - thats why they can dedicate a whole day to wedding show episodes! Wedding SOS, Rich Bride Poor Bride, I Do Let's Eat, Newlywed Nearly Dead and Bulging Brides, hit at every aspect you'd need to think about for your wedding.

As I write this, I am watching Wedding SOS. If you're not familiar with this show, the show follows Jane - a wedding coordinator who they dub a Fairy Godmother - who assists couples whose planning have gone wild and grants them three wishes to make their wedding a success. It's an interesting concept and usually she's fixing either the completely disorganized, or the kind of "out of the box" kind of couples. From what I can draw from this show, is the importance of a Wedding Coordinator. 

In high school, Wedding Planner was on my short list of careers. Seriously, right behind lawyer, politician and policy maker/analyst. So right now, I'm on a path to the last one (as I write this, I am on personnel leave as I write an exam for a policy analyst), but most of my jobs before my current career path involved event planning - not wedding planning - but it has the same principles. I headed my prom committee, coordinated events on boats that toured the Toronto harbour for a cruise company, and most importantly, I was VP of my university's students union, representing 41,000 students and with the portfolio of campus life...a.k.a all social events for the union at the university.

I naturally had assumed it wouldn't be that difficult planning a wedding. Well, I'm sure if we had decided we wanted to do some thing in Toronto, it wouldn't be that difficult. Since it would be my first wedding I'd be planning, I think I could have made it unique without fitting into some cookie-cutter mold of what a wedding looks like. I would have hired someone for the day or at least the month leading up to it because it is a full time job to get all the things together. The point is, everyone planning a wedding needs help, and I would recommend to everyone to get a planner. My friend, who is also planning a wedding, said to me: the last thing I want on my wedding day is for someone to come up to me and tell me a vegetarian meal is missing. I want to be in lala land on my wedding day so I'm hiring someone because I don't even want to know if the kitchen is on fire.

In terms of my fairy godmother planner, we had our first skype meeting the other night. I had worked a 12 hour day 7am - 7pm (working some overtime to have some extra Christmas/Wedding money) and when I arrived home, I googled "Time in Cebu". Where I thought they were 12 hours ahead, they are actually 13! So I adjusted my plans and chatted with her upstairs. The good news is that we're moving along to try and get BE Resort for the ceremony and the Shangri-La for the reception. Second, she says its completely possible to have my dress made in the Philippines (I am constantly jumping for joy at the thought of it!) and finally my task for the week is a wedding budget. Just because I am abroad, I'm not a rockafeller, so I do have a limit. Of course theres going to be some adjustments to account for the difference of how much things cost in the Philippines but I think its doable.

The wedding planning train is chugging along and I'm glad I'm blogging about it. Out of all the events I had planned, I am out of my skin with excitement!

Deposits and Payments ..from abroad

An issue that will come up again and again is remitting money to pay for deposits from abroad. A best case scenario would have been for me to dump thousands of dollars to a super trust worthy relative, pay one fee, and they would do domestic transfering and such for me. Alas, as with everything, that best case scenario doesn't exist, and although I would love to trust my coordinator with something like that, I'm too scared - and not financially secured, so likely I will be remiting money as it comes along.

I have started my research, since I need to send my deposit to Tisha. I'll update with another post when I actually do it.

Note: Obviously, people who do this on a regular business or OFW's who are trained by the Philippine government on leaving, probably have way more knowledge on this. So anyways, this is what a single Canadian-born Filipino girl researched, all by her lonesome.

There are essentially two ways (to my knowledge) to remittance - a bank wire transfer or a "door-to-door". A bank wire transfer is whern they will wire money into a bank account, or wire from your account to the receivers account. A "door-to-door" service is where they will litterally send the money to the person's doorstep in cash. I am guessing this is a wonderful service for more rural families who are receiving money.

Here is some information from my initial research:

One of the "Big Five" Canadian Banks:
I do not officially bank with one of the big five full service banks because I don't feel the fees and restrictions is worth it, frankly. I bank with a basic financial institution that is well known in Canada, but does not have actual full service banks. I do most of my banking online and it offers a comprehensive chequing, saving and the GIC and loan basics. Anyways, because its a basic bank they do not do account to account international wire transfers.

If however you do have a bank account with one of the Big Five in Canada- Royal Bank, Bank of Montreal, TD Canada Trust, Scotiabank or CIBC - you could inquire regarding their international rates. I walked into CIBC just to feel it out, and they let me know you must have an account with CIBC and their rates begin generally at $30.00 for a wire transfer into an international bank account. They did also mention it depends on the amount remitting. You'd have to discuss further and have more details because there are other restrictions and may be some other fees.

MoneyGram:
Their website has a nice calculator for their services. Depending on the service you use, the fees vary, but for me from Toronto to Philippines the fee was $17.84 for their Account Depost SMARTMONEY service and $25.00 for their 10 Minute Service. Unfortunately, their website doesn't explain what these services actually are, for you to make a decision. They also note "In addition to the transfer fees applicable to a transaction, a currency exchange rate set by MoneyGram or its agents may be applied. Prices subject to change.", so it may be more.

Western Union:
Very similar to MoneyGram but they have the ability of doing a transaction completely online without the use of their agents. I do remember seeing ads for this new service as being 24/7 and therefore more accessible...well according to them. From my understanding, you need to use a credit card to do it online, and it is not deposit of cash. Unfortunately to use this agentless service will cost you, with the fee (for me) at $29.04. To use a Western Union agent the fee was $20.33. Note, they also have a similar disclaimer in terms of additional fees:

Payments will generally be in local currency (except that in certain countries payment may be in U.S. dollars or other alternate currency at participating locations). In addition to the transfer fees applicable to this transaction, a currency exchange rate will be applied. Local currency is converted into the payout currency at an exchange rate set by Western Union. Any difference between the rate given to Customers and the rate received by Western Union will be kept by Western Union (and its Agents in some cases) in addition to the transfer fees. Please ask a customer service representative for information concerning the currency exchange rate applicable to your transaction.

Remittance Agency:
According to Statistics Canada's latest Census, in Canada Filipinos are the 4th largest visible minority group and one of the top source countries for immigrants to Canada. These statistics don't even speak to those not reported, such as Temporary Foreign Workers and Live-in Caregivers. From my personal and professional experience, this adds to the Filipino population but also drives some characteristics of the community. For example is the number of different remittance agencies in Canada that fulfill the need created by current or former OFW's in Canada.

PNB Remittance is the global remittance branch of the Philippine National Bank. I've seen them throughout Toronto's "Filipino" neighborhoods (there are few of these compared to other communities, but I could go on about that later). I reviewed their website and as I suspected, its not very informative. What I think is their fee schedule, shows fees based on the amount of money you are sending. Despite a website with a lot Canadian info, the amounts are in USD. For $499-1000USD for example, the fee is around $20USD.

I checked out the website of one of the bigger ones in Canada, iRemit. Their fees are less than the options described above. Door-to-door and bank-to-bank costs $10 if sending to Metro Manila, while $12 everywhere else in the Philippines. They also have a "iRemit visa" service where you can send your recipient a "visa card" but you load it with money, and they can use it like a debit card around the Philippines.

Close to my work is Mabini Express, that I did a walk in on my lunch break. Their door-to-door fees are $8 for everywhere in the Philippines, but their bank-to-bank fee is $12 and they work with "most" banks in the Philippines. You'll have to inquire with them for specifics, but the bank I needed to deposit my coordinator's deposit, they work with.

Conclusion: There are a lot of options out there, and I'm glad I did some initial research. I didn't realize how much the fees varied and the types of services out there. If you have any first generation family, recent immigrants or recent arrivals from the Philippines, I would suggest asking them and finding out their experience. I don't have that luxury, so am figuring this out on my own. I will likely go with iRemit or Mabini Express for this time around for a direct bank-to-bank deposit. Mabini for door-to-door situations in the future. I am not sure what would be the difference to choose one of the other options with higher fees. Maybe some people are concerned about reliability and the possibility of fraud or scams, but like I said these other agencies have a history and service thousands in Canada daily. If it was a new smaller company, I would have reservations. Obviously because of these fees, I am going to have to add a little bit more to my budget to deal with them and also have a plan on how to pay the vendors when I arrive.

Note: the Shangri-la takes credit card. No fuss no muss. Nice right?

Married Life - Pixar's Up

So I don't think I did a good job of explaining what we're like. I'm very good at policy and politics, etc, but love and feelings, surprisingly, I've gotten worse and worse at expressing myself.

Anyways, this clip is from Pixar's Up and its sort of what Rodney and I are like...except we could have babies and now have Isabela.

Another Birthday - More to Come

On November 29th, my partner turned 27, which made me realize that when we started dating when he was 23. We were still kids at that age! Just thinking how much he - we - have grown is so incredible.

Rodney and I met in Montreal. After graduating from University, I worked full time on campus, but still had time to pursue other interests. I was a member of Filipino community organization and had attended a human rights in the Philippines event in Europe, so was sponsored to go to Montreal to speak on the event. Rodney was also a member of the Filipino community organization that had sponsored me to speak. He actually wasn't there to hear me speak because he was working, but also in the evening he had spent some time with a Filipino youth who had been involved in drugs and recently quit. Rodney was keeping him company to support him and keep him from going back. Very honorable if you ask me.

Anyways, when we started dating our Philippine heritage was a big part of our discussion. We had really significant and deep conversations about politics and theory, which is incredible considering both of our backgrounds. So we fell in love and yadda yadda.

(I think technically we weren't dating yet when we took this picture)

We've been living together for three years and have a beautiful daughter, that .. I don't know.. I kind of feel silly writing about our love now. It's so real to us. He's the best I ever had.

I've never been with someone that thought struggling things out together made us stronger. I've been with someone that was so clear about everything, that wanted to discuss everything, think about everything ..so that we could be the best together. I've never been with someone that was so honest and so raw, that I could really be myself. We love each other so deeply, that its hard to believe because you'd think it was corny or unrealistic.

When our daughter was born, it was obviously a new chapter in our lives but it was true test of who we were as a couple. When she was born, we had only been together a little over a year. We used to have so many people in our lives, but when the baby was born that all changed. The picture above is from my baby shower, it was huge and fun and it made me excited to what was to come. Today, not a single person in that picture, and the majority that came to the shower, are still in our lives. Our parents live so far away that when it came to support - even to just have someone watch the baby so I can shower - was few and far between. There was alot of stress and alot of adjustment, so it really put us in a position to adjust to each others needs, grow as parents, and become a pillar for each other during this crazy time. Thinking back now, it probably did our relationship a world of good, just being the two of us, but I would not recommend anyone that is having a baby to do what we did. We're really special, and having a baby alone would take a lot of strength.

After everything we went through, this wedding is going to mean so much to us. We are so in love and so happy in our family. We can't wait for the big day.