Ringing in the New

There was not an inch to spare in the Manila Peninsula lobby, nor in any of the hotel’s restaurants. The crowd was that thick, with revelers starting to come from nine on.

To ring in the new, Hyperbeat, the Nonoy Lopez Band and Shoop played non-stop. The Pen’s creative director Anna Fay Rosal of the Flower Shop came up with the marvelous idea of bedecking the ballroom–from floor to ceiling–and the tables with black-and-white balloons.

GM David Batchelor and his beauteous wife Marilu (she in a silver-sequinned gown of her own design) were welcoming guests, among them Ambassador Alfonso Yuchengco, Tito and Marit Colome Yuchengco, Agriculture Secretary Cito and Ma. Elena Lorenzo, Andy and Tereret Liboro.

There were scores more to welcome: DFA Undersecretary Frank and Cora Yulo Ebdalin, Chermaine, Celia and Carole Cuasay, Congressman Raul and Lita Villareal, Doody Tuason, Doris Magsaysay-Ho, Manila Councilor Kim and Fely Atienza, Ric and Pitang Tiongson. Children were conspicuously present.

Tess Villareal was with Lasse Mench, Marc Uytengsu and Francesco Lops. Bobby and Tessie Rodrigo, Raymund and Anna Rufino, Abe and Nini Licaros, Robert See, Felipe Yap and Arthur Yang had their own groups. The fashionably dressed Alta Genuino in Dolce e Gabbana, Sugar Marasigan in a Roberto Cavalli gown and Lynn Ching-Pascual in a black-and-white strapless Max Mara creation drew attention and admiring stares.

How guests drank and made merry! As midnight approached, the place got increasingly noisier, and at the stroke of twelve, with all manner and mode of noise-makers pressed into service, there was near pandemonium. Everyone wished everyone else nearest him/her a "Happy New Year!"