Silver And Gold

It took almost a year to prepare Jeanne’s 50th Birthday and our Silver Wedding Anniversary – but it was all worth it. Our venue was the new Weber Library Hall in Blacktown. There were approximately 130 guests from the Harana Concert Band, Nielsen Cycling Group, Ex-TIers, Thales, Ex-British Aerospace friends.

Jeanne, Celine and army of friends made the whole event possible. Jessica and I only prepared for our bit in the program. The party went well beyond our expectations, thanks to the friends who were very generous with their time and ideas. It is a traditional Filipino party with a few exceptions. For example, the menu was chosen by Jeanne to be a bit healthy – none of the lechon and the dinuguan. We started promptly at 6:30pm and ended also by 11:00pm. Still there’s the dancing and the singing, we even have a Filipiniana section where Celine sang ‘Maalaala Mo Kaya’, Celine and Jessica danced ‘Pandango Sa Ilaw’ with Joy, and our Harana Sax Trio played ‘Dahil Sa Iyo’.

If you’ll only watch one of the videos we uploaded, watch this.

The main star of the night however is Jeanne. Through-out the year she has been spending time with the mums of Harana to dance the ‘Jai-Ho’, and although they all felt funny doing it they lovingly oblidged to Jeanne. She also spent time with her ex-Texas Instruments girlfriends to dance the Korean hit ‘Nobody’. With her ex-BAEA girlfriends, she danced the ‘Time of My Life’ although for various reasons the number in this group dwindled to 3. But that is not to say that the ex-BAEA group has less participation – in fact they had the most. Vivien Q organised a Zumba presentation and also did a Rock-n-Roll number with Wayne.

Even the DJ, Yoppy, made a superb ballroom dance presentations. He even got Ursula to waltz the ‘Last Dance’. Baby Marquez, perhaps one of our favourite singer other than our own daughter, sang “Looking Through The Eyes of Love” specially requested by Jeanne. She also sang ‘Natural Woman’ in honor of her Tita. Jiko Manaloto also gave a special Soprano Sax Solo – Feel So Good. He had problem with his backing track – but he persevered and played acapella.

Our renewal of vows is a light hearted program officiated by Jessica. She even went the trouble of getting herself certified as a minister on the internet to give credence to the ceremony. Then she gave a superb wedding toast that family found it so cute they posted it on facebook.

It was a great evening and in the end everyone jumped-in on the dance floor and had a bit of a go.

There were 463 photos taken from our camera alone, another 138 photos from Dexter’s and 145 from Jun Velasco. These were just the photos shared with us. The highlights are uploaded in YouTube and Flickr. It is one night we will treasure in our memory made very very special by our friends and family who attended. Even more special to all the family and friends who have been watching our YouTube postings and commenting via emails, facebook and on the video itself.