MANILA, Philippines?What makes a wedding memorable?

A fabulous designer gown for the bride? A-list sponsors? Imported flowers? A spectacular reception? A jewel-encrusted cake?

If you asked Lissa and Steve Piczon, it would be none of the above. And yet, many of the guests at their wedding a year ago still count it as one of the most beautiful, heartwarming, fun and relaxing they had ever been to.

When Lissa and Steve started planning their wedding, they agreed on the mood they wanted to achieve?light and fun? and fleshed out the details from there. They were determined to make their special day stress-free and enjoyable for everyone. The color theme itself, sage green, was chosen for its coolness.

Rather than hire a full-time coordinator, Lissa and Steve planned and worked on the details of the wedding themselves.

They called in a coordinator only for the day itself, and only to make sure all the systems they had put in place ran like clockwork.

Steve was beaming as he waited for his bride and greeted guests at the entrance to the Archbishop?s Palace chapel in Mandaluyong City. Many of them commented that they had never seen a happier, more excited groom.

Lissa came to her wedding in a friend?s white Mini Cooper driven by her father, lawyer Antonio Fontanilla. It was a ?cute? touch, people said, but also a timely message about human ecology. (Steve would later take the wheel for the drive to the Wack-Wack Golf and Country Club for the reception.)

A stylish but sensible dresser, Lissa had a dream design for her gown?lace for the bodice and long sleeves, a billowy skirt, no train, no long veil.

To execute it, she asked a Laguna-based dressmaker who had earlier done her friend?s wedding gown.

The bridal bouquet of white stargazers and roses and the bouquets of all the female members of the entourage, as well as the flowers for the chapel, were arranged by a vendor at the Dangwa flower market named Boy Mahusay.

Inside the chapel, as Lissa took her place with Steve before the altar, she sang along with the choir as the Mass started. The choir was Hangad, and Lissa has long been one of its gifted sopranos.

For their officiating priest, Lissa and Steve had only one person in mind?Fr. Jett Villarin, SJ, president of Xavier University in Cagayan de Oro. Besides being a distant cousin of Steve?s, he was also a favorite Mass celebrant of Lissa?s when she was a college student at the Ateneo and a member of the Ateneo Campus Ministry Group?s choir.

Since he knew the couple well, Father Jett?s homily was tailor-made for them.

?There?s joy in the steady,? he told Lissa and Steve, reminding them to continue enjoying all the things they liked to do together, but also ?joy in the incomplete,? emphasizing that they did not always have to be together for one to complete the other.

The principal sponsors were all handpicked for only one reason?their close personal ties to the bride or the groom, or to both of them. They had either seen Steve or Lissa grow to adulthood, and/or witnessed the unfolding of their love story which began at Globe Telecom where they both worked for some time.

At the after-dinner program, Lissa sprang two surprises on Steve. The first was a solo number, The Corrs? ?At Your Side,? and the second, a thank-you speech delivered in Waray, which was a tribute as well to her new Samareño family, particularly Steve?s parents, Candido and Leah Piczon.

Unknown to Steve, Lissa had conspired with a friend of his to translate her English into Waray, and with her sister Kathleen to prompt her in case she fumbled.

So, what makes a wedding memorable and beautiful?

Light and fun moments, certainly, but also, as the young Piczons have shown, simple gestures that come straight from the heart.