Wednesday, April 29, 2009 at 9:21pm

By this time, everyone knows that Judy Anne Santos and Ryan Agoncillo went under the radar with their wedding and surprised everyone. Except those in on it, of course - and I was one of a number who had to fight the urge to let the cat out of the bag. Am I glad I don't have to hold it in anymore! Here's my LONG kwento about what happened, for anyone who would care to read. =)

On our way to Batangas one evening in March, my mom got a call from one of my brother's partners at Balai Laiya, his friend Larry. I overheard my mom saying we already had one booking for April 27-28. And then Larry said something that made my mom go "Oh no! Naku, ngayon ako naman ang nanghihinayang!" And then she proceeded to say we would try our best to maybe transfer our guest. I thought: what could be so important that we needed to move that one booking we had? Immediately, a celebrity wedding came to mind. And then my mom whispered to me so our driver wouldn't hear. I knew it. And I was like, oh my god, we need to find a way to give them exclusive use of the resort!

And we did. La Luz owner Rommel Marasigan was kind enough to accommodate our request to find a good room for the couple scheduled to spend their honeymoon at Tivona for those dates. And fortunately, having been assured that the La Luz room they would get was as good as if not better than ours and that they would not have to spend for anything including food for that oveight stay, the couple agreed.

Next, since we were in the process of constructing new rooms, even though it wasn't in our budget and plans, I had our contractor renovate our Tower Room, now worthy of being called a Tower Suite - I wanted it done in time for the celebrity wedding event because I was so sure the couple would want to use it. Good thing our contractor worked well and fast.

My mom and I tried so hard to keep the secret to ourselves that we didn't even tell our own staff about it. All they knew was the April 27-28 booking was Balai's affair. But then apparently Juday herself had made a couple or so visits to the resort and our staff was beginning to suspect something. Rather than have them share their suspicions with other locals, we told them and gave them strict orders not to tell anyone. Not even my dad knew! And on Larry's end, he didn't tell his partners either especially since one of them was married to someone connected with ABS-CBN. Mahirap na.

Cut to Sunday, April 26. By this time my dad was in on the secret as well and went with us, and I had included him in the list of people to be given ID's (yup - each one of us, my mom, dad, myself, our driver and staff had our own ID's). When we got to the resort, we were shocked and somewhat disappointed to know that word of the wedding had already spread among the locals. Even our honeymooning guests knew! How could that be? They had heard it daw from some little boy from a nearby homesite! Eeks. Larry said some info had leaked out from the caterers. We told our guests to just keep it quiet. And it seems that everyone who knew or even just suspected this event was happening almost instinctively kept it hush-hush.

Monday, April 27. By moing, we found out that aside from the couple's advance party and people setting up, Juday herself was already in the compound. They had all arrived in the wee hours of the moing. Talk about sneaking in! I saw director Joyce Beal checking out each of the rooms for room assignments and introduced myself to her. She knew me as one of Regine's songwriters. I gave them a chart that would help them in assigning rooms to the couple's relatives and friends. Ryan I think arrived later that day.

Juday and Ryan were originally supposed to stay at the Balai rooms, but these tued out to be too small since they had a lot of stuff with them, and so just as I had hoped, Tivona's Tower Suite was definitely going to be used. At first, we thought Judai would be assigned to it. Later on we found out that Ryan was to stay in the Tower, and Juday would use our Seaside Rooms instead.

Our staff had to put in extra work assisting the couple's team in making one of Tivona's Seaside rooms the main dressing room and makeup room where all the gowns and dresses were hung. Found out that Ryan's room would be shared by Ogie Alcasid. Aha! So Ogie was coming too! I texted Ogie and found out he would arrive 430am the next day.

Also found out from our guard that Sharon Cuneta was coming too! Wow...this is when it started to hit us that this was a big event! What time she would come, we didn't know. I texted Senator Kiko Pangilinan to ask if he was coming to Laiya too. Kiko is one person who always replies to my messages, no matter how walang kwenta the text. But this time I got no reply. Maybe he was overseas or too busy.

I got to say hello to Rita Neri and her staff, who dropped by our place after having dinner at Taramindu and were on their way back to Sabangan where they were booked. Everyone went to sleep a bit earlier than usual because the plan was for the party to leave the resort by around 5-530am.

Tuesday, April 28. I awoke around 330am to people stirring below, since my room and my parents' room were right above Juday's quarters and the main dressing/makeup room. I heard a voice call out "Direk!!!" and I was pretty sure it was Ate Shawie's. "She's here!" I thought. With all the excitement going on and all the movement we could sense downstairs, we couldn't sleep anymore. I peeked out my window and saw my dad walking around and I decided to join him.

The first familiar person I saw was Alco Guerrero, son of Chit Guerrero of ABS-CBN. He was one of 2 people putting together some behind-the-scenes footage. I texted Ogie to ask if he was already around and he was. I found him in Balai's Room 9 and he was with Regine! I said hello, found out Ogie was gonna sing with Agot (so Agot was here too! Another surprise!), got to talk to Reg for a bit about working on a new project soon, and then I joined my folks and Larry as they made like all the other guests in eating churros con chocolate and grilled pan de sal with queso de bola for breakfast. Yummy! Everyone dressed in white must have been wondering who these mukhang-bagong-gising asungots were. Kebs!

And then I was pleasantly surprised to see my college friend Noel Ferrer - of course he would be here! He's always at events like this! He was so surprised to see me and to find out the place was ours. We were so happy to see each other! And we talked about how amazing it was that the whole thing was kept secret. I saw him later on interviewing people on-cam, asking what they all had to do to keep this secret to themselves. I also bumped into videographer Jason Magbanua, whose name took me a few seconds to remember (kakahiya but so what else is new with me?).

The darkness was giving way to light slowly and people had to start getting ready to leave. We found out that the church ceremony would be at 630am. It was now close to 6am and so people started getting into their cars. Ryan and his party went ahead, I think.

And then we saw Judy Anne step out from behind our house onto the beach.... wow, she was breathtakingly beautiful! She posed for a few photos with the sea as her backdrop. Ang ganda-ganda niya!

And then I saw Kiko stick his head out of the Seaside Room porch. Aha!!! I asked if he had received my text and that was when he confessed that he wasn't sure what to reply since the whole thing was a secret, so rather than lying to me, he decided to just not reply. Good job, Senator!

Finally, Sharon walked out of the room as Kiko was telling her "kina Trina pala ito eh.." - and it obviously didn't sink in what her husband's words meant, until she saw me and went like "oh my god it's you!" and gave me a hug. And then extra surprise, KC came out of the room. She was here, too! Wow! That Seaside Room was star power-packed!

When everyone left, that was when my folks, Larry and I went up to the dining deck to look at the setup and take photos while we could. Very simple, classy, elegant. Had tapa breakfast after that at our own dining area, and then changed into white outfits. We actually didn't know that everyone would be in white, but decided to bring what we thought was appropriate for a beach wedding and it's a good thing we did.

When the party came back (with bride and groom in a pickup driven by the groom himself - ang cute!) I asked different people how it went. They all said the same thing: that the ceremony was solemn and beautiful. And fortunately for them, even the weather was cooperating. While it had been drizzling the night before, by the time they all arrived for the reception the sun was shining.

Three big boats from Anilao came and parked in front on our beach. These boats took everyone to Balai Anilao in the afteoon. Apparently, Laiya was just one of three or four parts of the whole wedding celebration. The others would be the showbiz ones meant for colleagues and fans, much more public. But it's nice to think that Juday and Ryan chose our place for their private celebration, the one with family and friends and the ones closest to their hearts.

(Check out my facebook photos, too!)