That seemed just like just yesterday. Yesterday and the days before, those languid moments that never seemed to end. Then one day a rock hit our cozy Cat Club gang. In this case it was a rock on Wendy’s finger.
So the languid days of useless bantering suddenly changed into days of planning flights, booking hotels, fittings at Inno Sotto’s atelier and dreading the inevitable. That one of our emissaries was about to defect to matrimony island.
We all thought that Sept. 27 would be a day of tears and perhaps an attempt to put arsenic on the groom Anthony Hotung’s champagne. Wrong. It was a day of tears, yes, but they were tears of joy (surprisingly) for my scandale partner would be wed to a man who we wholeheartedly have decided was fight – thus Wendy-worthy. Wendy and Tony Hotung’s wedding was almost like a Vegas wedding, not for the organ and cheese factor, but because of the intimate cast of characters involved. Everyone knew one another, quite amazing for a Pinoy wedding.
Totally relaxed, we started dressing up an hour and a half before the wedding. All I had to do was slick on some gel and swipe some lipgloss. The bride, on the other hand, had to deal with the makeup artist from hell. To his credit (or discredit) he is the makeup artist for Baywatch Hawaii. "The bigger my makeup bag, the bigger the star," he says haughtily. Well it was big enough of a bag – I would safely say. Then as Wendy tried to nurse a hangover from our revelry the night before at W Honolulu , she also had to endure his "oh David (Hasselhoff) this" and "Yasmeen (Bleeth) is all clean now you know" drivel. But all that diva attitude was well worth it – Wendy looked superbly fight.
Now the hard part: facing dad and spending her last few moments as his baby. Of course my friend Marco Antonio and I hounded them during their precious last moments. We were posing in front of the happening wheels and of course just bugging them. I didn’t think that they appreciated that.
The wedding went on smoothly. Nobody objected, Wendy as usual was poised, Tony a picture of bliss, family all welcoming to the new member of the family and friends all well-behaved.
What’s a wedding without a sniffle or two – but all the women were prudent enough to wear waterproof mascara and if any of the men had some black tint running down their eyes... that would truly be scandale.
So time for the good part. Champagne and Kahlua pig galore as we watched the sunset and Wendy and Tony did a Cindy Crawford and Richard Gere-esque Vogue 1990-something pictorial. Music played and I swear the mood was so Byronic I was about to kiss my friend Patrick Reyno, who I know would never kiss me back – because basta!
We then proceeded to the ballroom which was pleasantly sparse, given there there were only 50 or so of us. Who says the more the merrier? No toes were mauled or gaffes from the staff went unnoticed. A funny quip came from one of Tony’s friends, John, who commented as he carved his quail which was the appetizer for the scrumptious five-course meal, "This reminds me of Thanksgiving when we were struggling." We all laughed. It was so relaxed, just like the parties we used to have when we were all just joyful spinsters.
Then came the speeches.
Patrick Reyno and Yvette Rodriguez, man and maid of honor, respectively, gave stellar speeches that, as Tim Yap said, raised the roof! So cry we did, aided of course by the woozy effect of the champagne and the thought that our wonderful Wendy and Tony would live the kind of life we only believed possible when we were kids.
So after the dramedy and wiping our generously moist faces, we then did what we did best: dance, dance, dance and take a hell of a lot of pictures of ourselves.
For as long as I’ve known this wicked Wendy, she has never looked more radiant, with or without Baywatch maquillage, and I’m sure that her radiance will just grow like a rising phoenix as she heads off with her green-eyed Prince Charming into never, never land.