Just ‘merried’

Just like the Greeks in the movie My Big Fat Greek Wedding, the highest grossing romantic comedy of all time, Filipinos are a clannish, traditional people. Filipino weddings are hardly ever between just bride and groom.

They involve children, parents, grandparents, classmates, officemates, neighbors, friends, Romans and countrymen. Before the advent of wedding coordinators, wedding planning was a family affair, down to the choice of dessert.

Because Filipino weddings celebrate family — the ties bind not just one family but an entire barangay. And these ties form the net that cradles you when you need a place to curl up in, and catches you when you fall.

At my baby sister Valerie (we’re the bookends in my parents Frank and Sonia Mayor’s brood of four girls) and her husband Ping Sotto’s 25th wedding anniversary celebration at the Blue Leaf in McKinley Hill last Monday, it wasn’t just their love for each other that we celebrated.

It was also the love that overflowed among all the members of the Mayor and Sotto families and all their friends, just like the wine that night. The love, however, was not as intoxicating as the wine — it was invigorating.

A Filipino-American recently told me that in New York, it is easy to survive if you are young and able. But when you’re old, you’re virtually on your own because of the realities of living in a society where the price of contracted help and caregivers is high, and real estate, astronomical. So some elderly people live on the streets, and I was told of one homeless person dying alone but with $3 million in stocks and bonds in her pushcart!

But I think that’s unlikely to happen in the Philippines, where family ties are like chain links.

***

For Val and Ping’s wedding anniversary, Philippine tourism got a boost with seven relatives (Mom, my sister Dr. Geraldine Mayor, my uncles Dr. Jun Reyes and Caesar Reyes, my first cousins Candice Reyes Cox, husband Aubrey and son Ethan) crossing the Pacific and Atlantic oceans from the US and a dear classmate of hers Mailet Bonoan Ancheta from Singapore. An uncle (former Vice Gov. Pedrito Reyes) drove from Oriental Mindoro and another aunt and uncle, Nellie Mayor Loleng and her husband engineer Elpidio Loleng, from Palawan.

Our sister Mae who is in the US sent a video message congratulating the couple.

Ping’s 89-year-old mother Naty Sotto, sharp and active, marched proudly down the aisle as did my mom, Sonia Reyes Mayor, escorted by my son Chino as my beloved Dad had passed away in 2010.

There was a hush when Valerie started walking down the aisle, radiant in her peach Joel Escober gown. And then the silence was followed by sobs, as most were crying tears of joy at her and Ping’s happily-ever-after, and tears of longing, as most remembered the man who would have been proudest that day: Dad. Val was his little girl, the apple of his eye, his baby.

Valerie’s Assumption classmates were in full force, including Sen. Grace Poe, who came with husband Neil Llamanzares and son Brian. (Grace and Neil will mark their 25th wedding anniversary in two years.)

Our adopted “sister” Büm Tenorio Jr. brought the house down with his wit and savvy as emcee, and now I fear I might lose my prized assistant editor to another calling!

And we danced the night away, while guests from a baby to a nonagenarian watched with delight. Each one in the room was bound by affection and admiration and the ties wound through us all.

That night, we were all family. We prayed, we ate, we drank, we were merry. With the merriment, it could have been Christmas.

***

Two balikbayans are going to return home to the US with fond memories of the Philippines. When he arrived from the US, my Uncle Caesar left his carry-on luggage by the Customs counter at NAIA 2. It wasn’t till he was halfway to Alabang when he realized suddenly that something was lacking. My uncle wasn’t hopeful he would recover his carry-on.

My sister assured him Filipinos have changed and that he would likely get his luggage back. True enough, his piece of luggage was waiting for him when he returned to the airport, with no one giving a hint of merienda money as reward.

Just last weekend, my cousin-in-law Aubrey left his wallet with cash and all his credit cards in the airport taxi that took them to Alabang, from the NAIA 2 domestic terminal. They had just spent an idyllic holiday in Bohol.

Aubrey was just about to cancel his credit cards when the doorbell rang and waiting outside the gate was the cab driver, wallet in hand. There was not a centavo missing.

Aubrey says he knew deep in his heart the wallet would be returned, that’s why he didn’t panic when he realized he left it in the cab.

“Filipinos attach a religious significance to most of the things they do,” he says. They like to do things right.

And so for all of us, March was truly merry.

(You may e-mail me at  [email protected].)