BAGUIO CITY – Some forty three couples tied the knot during the mass wedding ceremonies sponsored by the local government as part of the activities for the celebration of Family Month last Saturday at the third floor of SM City Baguio.
The mass wedding ceremony organized by the City Social Welfare and Development Office (CSWDO) was done simultaneous with the presentation to the public of the Largest Wedding Cake by the Hotel and Restaurant Association of Baguio (HRAB), one of the major highlights of this year’s 14th annual Hotel and Restaurant Tourism (HRT) Weekend.
Mayor Mauricio G. Domogan congratulated the newly-wed couples for legalizing their living arrangement that also legalizes the status of their children thus avoiding complications on their status when they need their birth certificates, like during enrolment.
He challenged the couples to put God at the center of their marriage to allow them to be able to hurdle the challenges in life.
The youngest couple during the 24th mass wedding ceremony was a 19-year old female and a 22-year old male while the oldest couple was a 52-year old male and a 55-year old female who were blessed with 6 siblings over the past three decades of living together.
The mayor underscored that marriage is a one-on-one contract between husband and wife with God as their unseen witness, thus, the contract and only death can separate them according to the Bible.
According to him, the couples should practice continuous courtship, have consistent communication, possess the necessary commitment for the preservation of the sanctity of the contract they entered into before the solemnizing officer, with God as their unseen witness.
Domogan officiated the mass wedding rites of the 43 couples who came from the different barangays of the city to jumpstart the activities lined up by the local government for the city’s 24th celebration of Family Month.
City Social Welfare and Development officer Betty F. Fangasan said the local government adopted strategy in looking for couples to wed by reaching out to the different day care centers around the city for the parents of children with still unwed parents as participants in the free mass wedding rites.
She added the usual P500 solemnization fee charged to each couple was waived by the local government to entice unwed couples to avail of the benefits of the mass wedding rites aside from the conduct of pre-marriage seminars among other gifts provided them by local officials who acted as principal sponsors and other private individuals who contributed their time, effort and resources for the successful staging of the event.
By Dexter A. See
Photo by: JOSEPH B. MANZANO