Wedding, yes; reception, no more!

Curtain-raisers:

•  Congratulations to direk Brillante “Dante” Mendoza for winning Best Director at Spain’s Sitges International Film Festival for Kinatay, the same film that won for him the same award in Cannes.

•  Kim Ok-bin, the Korean named Best Actress in the same festival, won for the movie Thirst which also stars our very own Mercedes Cabral, directed by Park Chan-wook. She shared the honors with Spanish actress Elena Anaya. Like Kinatay, Thirst also competed in last May’s Cannes Filmfest where it won a Special Jury Award.

•  The Sitges Film Festival was founded in 1967 and is considered one of the world’s three iconic fantasy film events together with Portugal’s FantasPorto and Belgium’s Brussels Film Festival. The festival opens in early October every year in the Catalonian coastal town of Sitges, some 40 kilometers south of Barcelona.

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Yesterday’s Funfare broke the news that — yes, but of course! — the well-publicized wedding of Sen./Vice Presidentiable Mar Roxas and his beloved Korina Sanchez will be pushed through come what may.

The much-awaited wedding is green and go on Oct. 27 (yes, of THIS year) at 3 p.m. at the beautiful and historic Sto. Domingo Church in Quezon City. 2,000 invites are set to go out this week, only two weeks before the wedding date. 

“The wedding details and preparations weren’t all up to me, you see. The changes weren’t because of just one person. In a big way, the typhoons — one after another — set all our plans and preparations back because we all got busy in relief operations for weeks. Mar was busy in his headquarters and traveling all over Luzon and I was doing public service through my show Rated K,” the bride-to-be explained. “I was so surprised that there were speculations after we moved the date by a mere four days from the 23rd to the 27th. It wasn’t really a big deal. It was Mar who wanted it moved because he wanted to use the Araneta Coliseum for the reception and it wasn’t available on the 23rd. When calamity struck the nation I suggested we postpone the wedding altogether to after the elections — or at least January next year. But I agreed eventually that it would start too much speculation again.”

The “People’s Wedding” was originally going to have a grand reception at the family-owned Araneta Coliseum. “Para makatipid, so we don’t have to pay for a hotel,” the groom-to-be Senator Mar Roxas said. “Korina and I wanted to treat the less-fortunate at our reception too. We were planning to invite people from different barangays with tickets to be given away. May mga alaga din kaming communities ni Korina. She has one in Umiray, Quezon and I am close to the people at Baseco Compound in Manila and Gawad Kalinga. Sila sana ang mga papupuntahin din namin.”

The reception would have had 10,000 people in attendance — from all walks of life — eating the same food and treated to a short program of love songs. “Naku, it would have been so nice. Sama-sama talagang nagsasaya,” Korina regretted.

But the calamity that struck the country changed the plans altogether. “We just decided it was the right thing to do,” Mar explained, “and we can only hope our guests will understand. Nabawasan man tayong lahat, maraming mas nangangailangan naman ang mabibigyan ng tulong.” Korina, the bride-to-be, would have wanted a regular wedding and reception (“At first I couldn’t imagine inviting people then not feeding them”), but she agreed it wouldn’t be right to have a grand celebration while people were suffering. “I went around Bulacan, Laguna and Marikina. People are now at ground zero. Nakakakonsiyensiya naman na gumastos nang malaki para sa selebrasyon habang nakalubog pa sa dusa ang marami sa atin. I’m sure our guests will understand.”

Around P2 to 3-M may be donated by the couple to different foundations for calamity-stricken areas, including the Sagip Kapamilya Foundation of Channel 2 and the Kapuso Foundation of Channel 7. 

“Mar and I hope that our guests will still attend and be part of our wedding at the church which promises to be a beautiful and meaningful Mass. We will make time to meet and greet everyone after. After all, the wedding is what is essential in all this, right?” said Korina.

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