Weddingbee

It’s time to bring on the sponsors! Don’t worry, I don’t mean the commercial variety, but the personal kind (You didn’t think we were going to advertise to get free products at our wedding, did you?). Welcome to the madness that are Filipino bridal parties!

A traditional Filipino bridal party has much more than flower girls, ring bearers, bridesmaids and groomsmen (not to mention parents of the bride and groom, readers for the ceremony, ushers, siblings… those ‘hidden’ bridal party members!).

It wouldn’t be a Filipino wedding if you did not have your Ninongs and Ninangs (godfathers and godmothers, respectively) by your side. Also called sponsors, your Ninongs and Ninangs who participate in your wedding don’t just have to be your baptismal godparents—they can be close relatives, family friends, or other elders important to your lives (or, people with stature… as I’ll explain below).

There are two kinds of sponsors at Filipino weddings: principal and secondary sponsors.

Principal sponsors are those married couples that the bride and/or groom look up to, and who stand as witnesses to the marriage. In the Philippines, the principal sponsors sign the marriage certificate as witnesses. Back in the old days when males were courting, they would have to visit the sponsors right along with the prospective bride’s biological parents. They are seen as counselors to your marriage. Ostensibly, if you ever went through a rough patch with your spouse, your Ninong and Ninang would be there to guide you through it.

Importantly, in Filipino custom, it is the groom’s family that pays for the entire wedding (not the bride’s family… I wish it was like this in the US!), but the principal sponsors are usually expected to contribute a large amount of money towards the wedding or as a gift for the newly married couple to help them start out. Clearly, this means that if you are a principal sponsor that you not only have some moral authority (as lifelong counselors to bride and groom) but that you have some money to go along with it. Hence, the phenomenon of crazy status people being invited to weddings and standing in as principal sponsors, such as senators, celebrities, or other Philippine government dignitaries. Sounds bizarre, but basically if you are any kind of upper middle-class Filipino family, you’ve gotta have some baller like that in your wedding, whether or not you’re very close to them.

Moving on… secondary sponsors are other married couples that assist with the cord and veil ceremony, coin ceremony, and candle ceremony. There are four sets of couples that comprise the secondary sponsors. I don’t think the secondary sponsors necessarily have to be ‘elders’ that the couple looks up to, as the principal sponsors are supposed to be, but can be couples that the bride and groom are close to, like friends and relatives.

(Sponsors lined up at the ceremony)

As you can see, with the addition of one or several pairs of primary sponsors and up to four pairs of secondary sponsors, a traditional Filipino wedding party is HUGE! Mr. ST and I are all about simplicity and small touches, and a ten-person entourage is the opposite of simple and small. I think it would be too overwhelming for us!

We are not doing the coin and candle ceremonies, so we’ve eliminated two sets of sponsors there. If we were going to stick to tradition, there would still be three sets of sponsors—one principal, and two couples each for the cord and veil. We’re doing away with the principal sponsor role altogether, and I have asked one of my uncles and his wife (who I was very close to growing up) to be the sponsors for both the cord and veil ceremonies, so our ten person Filipino wedding entourage is scaled down to a manageable two. Whew!

(How cute are these kids? I wouldn’t mind some extra kids at our wedding!)

How have you tamed the size of your wedding party?

[Photographs by Kix Tavora]

• A Warm Welcome
• Scrrrrrrrr…Where...