Naughty-cal Party

It's Rachel's birthday yesterday, August 9, and we celebrated it ahead of time. She booked one of Victoria Court's thematic room, Austin Powers, and asked all her guests to wear their best NAUGHTY-CAL attire! It was my first time to enter a motel so I never had the chance to explain to my parents where Paolo and I were going last Saturday night!

I'm not surprised to see gals in stripes upon my arrival. Almost all girls came in stripes of white and different colors, flats and skirts while I opted for a pure denim blue high waist pants and heels.

L-R: Kitty, me, Susie, Kim E., Cham and Jovy.

 

 Cross-processed these because I grabbed 'em from Kim E.'s Facebook, thus a poor image quality!

Paolo sat beside Georty, his high school friend, who happens to be my friend as well from grade school!

The night started with a bottle of Red Horse and crispy pata! Yum!!! The camera caught me red-handed with a bottle of this kicking alcoholic bevarage and a crispy pata on the other hand while wearing Cham's black and white feathered earrings.  

 Marianne x Paolo

Jovy x Marianne: BEFORE

Jovy x Marianne: AFTER

Jovy NEVER smokes! And she will never smoke! Props only!!!

Cham also tried the GANGSTAHHHH look c/o Pao's and Georty's caps!

At last, photo op with the birthday girl!

The happy crowd when Rachel pole-danced! We all screamed for more!

One of Paolo's many, many, many wacky moments with me! And I can't remember why I was holding another stick of cigarette... I must say, "Props only!" again!

The crispy pata is to die for! Really!

Moments before the other girls left, we tried pole dancing! Hahaha! It was soooo hard!

Also, the ba-næ-na shake was epic!

THE WHO?!

A "somehow" decent pic! Jovy, Susie, me, Kim and Cham!

OMG I tried to pole dance but I gave up easily...

...so I went back drinking my banana shake again!

Rachel added Fundador in my glass of Badtrip! Ughhhh much!

All my photos with Cham are blurry, I wonder why.

I don't have a decent photo with Rachel but here's one photo of her, which I bet, she'll never remember!

Happy birthday, Chel! xx

Royal Kouture's A Royalty Affair

I had a collaboration with Royal Kouture, an online shop owned by my good friend, Kim. This is my first venture as a "stylist" and I was very excited about this a couple of weeks back. I booked my beautiful friends as models, had an ex-deal with a budding photographer and agreed with chums to do the models' makeups. Since typhoons Juaning and Kabayan devastated the country on the last few days of July, I had to do some last minute changes on the location. An outdoor shoot deemed to be sooooo impossible and I didn't want to have a studio shoot that's why I tried to borrow a friend's restaurant in Kamuning.

ROYAL KOUTURE: A Royal Affair

Photography by: JC Cordel

Creative director and styling by: Marianne Marcial

Models: Ruselle Alinea, Kristel "Kite" Sandoval, Susan Santos, Kaye Quong and Kim Gabriel

Makeup by: Rachel Cayao, Kristel Tan and Cham Martin

Special thanks to: Al Carriaga of 77 Cafe,  Restaurant and Bar

We had a limited time so everybody did a multitasking. Kudos also to our very supportive boyfriends, Paolo and Mon + Kristel's new boyf. They helped us with the moving of the interiors, assisting JC in lighting and stuff. I guess the boys are enjoying such a fashionable act. I bet next time, more boyfriends are coming!

It's the Mon Inciong pose!

Props only!

We brought our own items as well for a better shoot. If makeup artists bring their own makeups and the photographer brings his own camera, the stylist must bring her own shoes and accessories!

My own shoes + some of my accessories piled together with Kim's.

Clothes provided by Royal Kouture.

Kristel did Ruselle's makeup.

While Cham and Rachel worked on the twins--Kaye and Kite.

Now I'm about to show you my top picks, both raw and post-processed, composed of the models' exquisite beauty and features, a photographer's piece, the makeup artists' imagination, the collection's style and character which helped the stylist's role:

Kite, Ruselle and Kaye in a vintage crop top available in orange, white and blue.

I swear Kite and Kaye look like twins!

This photo must be my favorite. Kaye wearing a high-waist mustard shorts paired with a vintage maong dress used as a tube top.

Models wearing a see-through polo available in three colors: brown-brown, brown-peach and brown-beige.

Side and back details of the vintage long sleeves.

Ruselle in a zebra bandage dress.

Dolman sleeve polo in three colors: white, beige and peach, as worn by Ruselle, Susan and Kim.

Kaye looked classic in this photo.

 Kite and Kaye spell attitude wearing stripes dress, in two colors: blue-white, violet-black.

A Mara Clara peg won't hurt, perhaps?

Leopard bandage dress worn by Kite and Kaye.

LBD, laced, on Ruselle.

Susan and Kim wearing a maong shift dress.

Vintage maong dress with two different skirt details on Kaye and Kite.

It's kind of hard to choose photos to post here! I'm not posting the entire collection here. For orders and other inquiries, kindly check out Royal Kouture's Facebook account here. Royal Kouture features the latest trend in everyday fashion in a very affordable price. From animal prints, nautical, lace, vintage, floral to modern, Royak Kouture has it.

During this first venture, I learned new things. Next time, I should not forget to bring SCISSORS to trim down unnecessary threads, a box of hairpin to join my paper clip, clamp and safety pin family, more accessories, an iron and a set of hangers. In addition, I must also anticipate the need of the makeup artists when it comes to lipsticks and eye shadows and since I have a growing collection of these, I'm willing to share them all on my next shoot. It's an unending, learning experience. It's tiring, literally, but I enjoy every sweating minute of it!

Leaving you with an unflattering, haggard photo of me:

"You smile, I style."

I need to get back to my system soon because I have a series of back log posts: another collaboration with Loca Trends (and the story behind that), a surprise from MaRis and Rachel's Naughty-cal birthday party to name a few.

♥,

Why We Love Manila

WHY WE LOVE MANILA is a positivity campaign that promotes Metro Manila. Founded by two amazing girls presented by  Team Manila, CityPoynt.com, White Knight Hotel Intramuros, Yeo's and the Department of Tourism and supported by Carlos Celran, Tricia Gosingtian, Nina Sandejas, Seph Cham & Shai Lagarde  and Regina Belmonte.

The mechanics of this contest is as easy as 1-2-3. It's like answering the question why you love Manila in a such creative way! If you're proud of our capital city, then that won't be hard. You can have the chance to win special prizes and even if you don't, worry no more because you've just promoted and bragged about how beautiful Manila is without asking for anything in return, right?

I'll be having my own entry as well, I'm still finalizing it though. Deadline of entries is on September 22, 2011. So what are you waiting for?

For more information, check out their uber cool website, add them on Facebook and follow them on Twitter. Spread the word and spread the reason why we all love Manila! :)

Bye, July!

The month of July just passed by and so far, this is the fastest-est-est month of  my 2011. I usually hate the rainy months but everything changes, so now I'm loving the raindrop season. Would you believe we had 6 typhoons in 1 month? Whew!

I started and ended the first month of the year's second half (ANALYZE THAT!) by doing the top two things I love: traveling and styling. I went to Baguio with Paolo's family last July 1 and this weekend, I had two collaborations wherein I styled tweens, teens and young professionals. I'm proud to say that I enjoyed every single moment of it, even if I had to kneel down to put shoes on my models.

It was an early call time last Saturday for Royal Kouture. I organized everything--photographer, location, makeup artists and models with the help of my friends! All clothes are, of course, provided by the great Royal Kouture owner, Kim. To make styling better, I brought my own shoes and accessories plus clips, pins and tapes.

I'm sorry that I can't contain my excitement to show you how the shoot went well. I don't even want to spoil the collection. The best thing I can do for now is to give you a teaser in black and white (I CANNOT SHUT UP, HAHAHA!) using my phone's camera. Here:

I believe I Twitpic-ed the first photo last Saturday, sorry talaga hehe. Again, I cannot contain my happiness, seeing my sense of style to beautiful girls, aaahhh! Peace. :)

I love being resourceful and creative at the same time. Once I get the final photos, you'll understand what I'm talking about. I'll also credit the location as soon as I post the official entry for my collaboration with Royal Kouture. I'll credit everyone and everything!

THIS!!! THIS!!! This set is one of my most favorite! Sheer, so sexy! I really can't wait to post this in colors!!!

After almost four hours of the photoshoot, we went straight to Paolo's nephew's birthday party in Vito Cruz. Haggardo Versoza much! We had our first ever decent meal of the day at the party's venue, Kenny Rogers. The party's theme was military, kids are required to wear something with an army touch. Sadly, I didn't know there was a theme, I went there in a nautical-inspired attire!

Our baby girl Neveah bagged the Best in Costume award! Yaaaay she's such a cutie patootie, with matching hand salute gestures pa! We called her Labanos/Gabriel a la Andi Eigenmann in Minsan Lang Kita Iibigin.

We got home by 7:00 PM and Paolo and I decided to go to sleep for an hour. We were going to attend my cousin's birthday house party at 9:00 PM but because we were so worn out (imagine sleeping at 1:00 AM and waking up at 4:30 AM the same day) we got up by 11:30 PM! The party has just started when we arrived at the party, thank God for Filipino time!

While having a good time at the party, I saw Angelica Panganiban's tweet about his Tagaytay trip with her friends and Derek Ramsay:

I thought of this funny idea and I tweeted Angelica and Derek back:

In less than a minute, Derek replied:

So I was like:

Hahaha! Wondering what picture I posted to get his attention? CLICK HERE. See? Not all celebrities are snobs! AND DEREK DOES NOT DIRECT MESSAGE!!! Moving on, we finished 4:00 AM the following day and headed to Sky Garden yesterday afternoon to meet some of my friends.

It was my first time to try Gong Cha, and dang, I liked it! I ordered Chocolate Milk Tea with extra pearls and 50% sugar. Next time, Serenitea and Moon Leaf! And since it was raining hard yesterday, we moved to Army Navy (to get dry seats) and treated ourselves with a Steak Burrito and Freedom Fries! We played with this little brown paper bag while waiting for Mika, Maro, Mark, Monte (M'ssss!) and Johnson. Paolo even pulled a prank on me. I was waiting for him to take a picture of me with that brown bag on and I was asking if it's done but no one's talking! When I removed the bag, he wasn't there and hid somewhere! People were looking at me as if I'm out of my system but since I'm used to his jokes like this, I pretended like nothing's happened. Hehe. I'm game like that!

***

Surprised? Don't be! We're currently fixing stuff and bridging the gap of our friendship so expect to see me with them just like before. Let's all be happy and set aside the things that make us a.) ugly b.) unworthy c.) childish and immature d.) suffer e.) all of the above and let's all forget the past, move on and enjoy life. :)

Thank you and bye, July! August is going to be an awesome month like you! And oh, by the way, happy monthsary to the Monthly Period group. ♥