Part 2: The Wedding Vows, Chapter 1

READ PART 1: THE WEDDING RINGS, CHAPTER 4. The year I turned ten, I woke up one morning and thought about changing my life. I lay still on the mattress in the lower bunk that I shared with my little sister, staring at the tiny, curling dust motes floating through the sunbeams, and felt the…

Part 1: The Wedding Rings, Ch. 4

READ PART 1: THE WEDDING RINGS, CHAPTER 3 The fairy tale began with the rumbling of a black SUV cutting through the quiet of the early morn. It was therefore appropriate that it would end the same way. It was 8:20 in the morning, and our bags had already been loaded onto the SUV, which…

Part 1: The Wedding Rings, Ch. 3

READ PART 1: THE WEDDING RINGS, CHAPTER 2. The wedding was set at 4:00 pm. Armageddon, apparently, had been scheduled to go off at precisely five in the morning. We emerged from the guest house in search of breakfast to find the house in an uproar. But it was an organized—and glamorous—uproar, with people sweeping in…

Part 1: The Wedding Rings, Ch. 2

READ PART 1: THE WEDDING RINGS, CHAPTER 1.The rehearsal was held at the wedding venue itself: the Our Lady of Lourdes Parish in Tagaytay City. I learned years later that booking the church for a one-and-a-half-hour long wedding ceremony took months, it was that popular. The fact that the wedding party had managed to book…

Part 1: The Wedding Rings, Ch. 1

Sometime in 1994Less than two hours after we first met, Christian married me.That's slightly more impressive than it sounds, given that he and I didn't have our first kiss until over a day later. At that point, it was already somebody else's wedding reception.Granted, the circumstances surrounding our wedding were unusual. For one thing, when…