Of Wallowing and Weddings.

I was chatting with my sister a while ago, and I noticed she seemed really perky these days. She must be excited about something, so I suspiciously asked if she's pregnant. That question made her answer "I'm so~ not", in her most defensive tone. We talked about visiting Palawan together when I come back home next month. It must be fun cause we never really 'bonded' for the longest time. Like I said in my previous post, she and I are really different but we're surprisingly close. We were inseparable before, even sharing the same condo when my parents decided it's about time for us to move out of the house. She's more like a bestfriend to me, a constant shopping buddy, and my very own fashion critic, so I kind of miss her a lot. While we were growing up, I hated her so much and even called her my 'evil sinister sister'. There was a lot of sibling rivalry going on between us. I was my father's favorite and she was my mother's. She's more of the 'intelligent type' being the class valedictorian from elementary to highschool, and graduating cum laude in UP. I was more of the 'academically challenged' like how my father likes to put it, no special awards or anything, just mediocre grades. What's the point of studying when you'll just be compared to someone like her? And besides, I thought school is about having fun, being with friends, and having a hell of good time. Our difference doesn't stop in academics, and it's very much evident by how our rooms look like (mine is loud purple now, and although I haven't seen her new flat, I'm guessing it's peach). I'm a neat freak and I like things ridiculously organized, she's anything but neat and organized. I like black and pink... and she adores lemon color, mint green, and peach tones which happen to be the top 3 colors I'm never gonna be caught wearing. Physically, our differences can fill up a whole journal. She's three inches taller than me, fairer by several shades, and has that distinct chinita look. I, on the other hand was always referred to as the smaller, darker, and relatively the non-chinita uglier one which totally defies our strong chinese surname. But as we got older, our similarities became more evident. We like going to the same salon, shopping at the same places, reading the same stuff. Both of us love traveling, going to the beach, and having family picnics.

I wasn't used to hearing her talk about boys, so I was startled when one day, approximately 2 years ago at age 24, she came home saying somebody's courting her. After a couple of months, she had her first boyfriend ever. I first met him when I came back home in 2007, he was there at the airport together with my whole famliy. He kept on calling me 'ate' which creeped the hell out of me considering he's a year and a half older. But he was nice, polite, and awfully quiet. But then, for some profound reason I felt exactly the way she felt when she saw Chris for the first time.. She thought Chris was geeky with a creepy sense of fashion, and that's exactly how I felt with her bf.. I have issues with guys wearing plaid polos, I think it's specifically worn to annoy people.. and plaid happens to be his favorite pattern and he wears that most of the time. ^^ I heard they met in the church where both of them are active members. I also found out that my sister was his first gf ever, and for some strange, unspoken reason, that thing bothered me. And just like how my mom hated Chris, she also hated my sister's bf, but since we're way over the legal age, she couldn't do anything about it. It didn't take long before he finally proposed, and fast-forward to 15 months, they got married. Now that little sis is a married woman, she became more practical. She has cut back on her weekly retail therapy and saved instead. I heard she even enrolled in a cooking class. I've never seen her cook anything besides fried egg and Lucky Me pancit canton, so the whole marriage thing is doing wonders in domesticating her.. One thing I'm kind of regretting is the fact that I wasn't there when she was doing the whole wedding preparation thing. She actually asked me to be her wedding planner right after she got engaged, but I wasn't able to fulfill that duty. But even without me, her wedding turned out nice. It was very simple yet memorable, like how she always dreamed. She's moving to Australia sometime next year, and this saddens me to the point that I'm wallowing cause I'm not used to not seeing her for a long time (we were never separated for more than six months). But now that our separation has some degree of permanence, I feel bad that I took her for granted. I should have been nice to her when I had the chance...

I'm posting some photos from her wedding last December...



Bridal Car.




The Aisle.




Happy.




The Rings.




Cake and Cupcakes.




The Centerpiece.




Floral Girls.




With Mom and Francis.




The Lake at night.




Newlyweds.