A debut experience

February 23, 2015. A date that my sister and I have always looked forward to. The idea of that day and a number that changes, basically everything. It represented freedom. 18 was the lucky number. Summer of 2014, I remember specifically that my friend and I were at Manhattan beach just enjoying the day. Somehow, one my friends mentioned that he attended a debut recently. Maggie (my twin sister's name) and I never actually planned on having one, because the expenses for such a huge party is unbearable to even think of.

A DEBUT is a Filipino version of a sweet 16, quinceañera, or bat Mitzvah. It is celebrating the coming of age for girls when they turn 18 years old. My friend asked if we were going to have one, and Maggie and I playfully toyed with the idea. The next day we asked our parents if we could have a debut. Surprisingly, they said yes! So we were going to have a debut! Exciting right?! Debuts are known for being grand and huge parties where family and friends of the Debutant celebrate with her on that crazy day. Debuts are usually planned at least a year before the set date, the process is similar to a wedding. It needs prior planning, crazy research, and definitely tons of time to figure out what goes down on the day of the event . Maggie and I just went into this Debut blindly. We did not hire an event planner because we were in a budget and having one was just expensive. So we were on our own time and pace, and time flew by quicker than we expected.

It was now December of 2014 (2 months before the set date February 28, 2015; we had to move it because we couldn't do the 23rd), that Maggie and I started planning the basic foundation of the party. We struggled on the theme of the debut because our site already kind of had a theme, but we ended up with a garden floral theme. My mother decided that she would be anchorage of the food. But we were still working slower than what we needed to. January came in and we were full on focused on the debut. We were extremely behind. Maggie and I were a mess trying to plan and figure out every little detail. From the music, food, dances, decorations, and dresses! We had less than a month to figure out our debut party! We were on panic mode and we were running out of time! We had one thing done out of the long list.

Dress: It was the beginning of February that we found our dress. It was a crazy search for the dresses because we had to get it before the photo shoot day. It was even harder to find the dresses because Maggie and I are a ruler and cannot fit into dresses because we couldn't fit most dresses. But when we found the dresses, we were both relieved and extremely pleased with our choice. Although, we ended up with two different colors, which we did not mind.

DJ: Maggie was in charge of the finding the DJ. She struggled to find a cheap DJ, because again we were on a

budget. The price range of the Dj's she found were over $1,000, and that definitely was over our budget. My dad recently went to a family friend party and they had a DJ. So he asked our family friends about the Dj that played at their party. He got the DJ's information and an appointment to meet us and the part location. Turns out, he dj's for a hobby so his price weren't crazy expensive. He charged $100 per hour, and we only need him for 4 hours, and he wasn't charging to set up and equipment and was willing to play requested songs. So he was perfect.

Invitations: We did not send out the invitations until 3 weeks before the set date. What we did for a cheaper invitation was I had to find an online template for an invitation and searched for cheaper prices. There were a lot of cheap invitations services online but, it would take 3 weeks to get it in the mail. Our event was in 3 weeks! But, we decided to buy thick paper and make tiny invitations for our friends in the size and template of a business card. We also decided to decorate the tiny invitations with glitter! For the adults and families, we purchased a pack of invitation sheets (with 4 invitation cards per sheet & floral themed) and printed the template I did online on them.

Left: 2 programs in the color of dresses Center: a sheet of invitation, contains 4 invitations right: a sheet of tiny invitations (cut down into cards) a black and white collage picture (was with the programs on the event)

Programs: Since the program was one of the little unnecessary detail of the party, somehow I did not forget about it. 3 days before the event, I remembered that we did not have any programs. So I used a brochure template to format the programs and added a picture from the photo shoot for the cover and later on printed it on regular paper. I went to make around 150 copies of them on two different colors, the color of my dress and Maggie's. I also had to fold each one, it took me only an hour to do so.

Food: My mom was in charge of the food. It wasn't easy for her because she was still looking out for my 3 years old sister as well as helping us with the party. She played with the idea of a taco stand, but she wasn't willing to pay for the price for that. So we finally found a good price for good food. We ordered many trays of rice, chicken Katsu, beef dish, macaroni salad (all of which were on heated trays to keep them warm). My mom was still worried there won't be enough food, so she planned to make a few trays of her pasta, and mix some salad for the vegetarians. For dessert we had cake, which by the way we almost forgot! We had the cake ordered 2 days before our day. We purchased 2 boxes of brownies from Costco and got a red vine container. And for drinks, we had to 2 liters of different sodas and bottled water.

Utensils: We purchased these hard plastic plates at Costco, along with silver plastic spoons, forks, and knives. We purchased clear plastic cups as well. Designed napkins were also purchased. Location: The place setting was automatically in the clubhouse that our condominium unit offers, which was a two-story cabin mixed with the vintage style of the place. The format of the interior was that the 2nd floor has two divide parts, which the stairs created and it had an open area in the middle, so both of the divided sides of the 2nd floor could see the middle of the first floor. The first floor was the biggest one, it had a long kitchen section on the right side, it had fireplaces, a wooden stairs, 2 pianos, and it had 3 pool tables and 1 ping Pong table, the restrooms were also on the 1st floor. The 2nd floor was a tiny side section, so we planned to put the DJ up there so we could use the first floor for our guest tables. And to also create more a bigger dance floor. On the 1st floor there were many furnitures so we decided to make a lounge area in the pool table section so that we could use the extra couches there and create more space on the main and center of the floor. Basically, we rented the place, but we were responsible for clean up and setting up, but it came with two guards. We rented it for 4 hours, from 7-11pm.

Decorations: What Maggie and I imagined was to put hanging bulbs/lights in between the big space. We would connect the hanging lights from one side of the 2nd floor to the other so it would be hanging in the middle. We planned to decorate the tables with plastic table cover (so it was easier for us to clean afterwards) and on top of that were fabrics in the color of our dresses. We planned on making big ribbons from the same fabric that were putting on the table to put on the chairs. The day before the event, my best friend's mother offered to make the center pieces for our debut. So she made 10 of those center pieces for 10 tables (although we had more tables, we decided to put them on the first floor tables).The center pieces made by Lani Bravo.

Court: Traditionally, the debutante would have 18 girls and 18 guys in her court. But since Maggie and I are twins, we decided it would be smart to cut it in half. Since, first of 36 people for each of us would totally be too many people and we would drag the event, and 2nd we share friends. So we had decided to pick our 10 closest girl and guy friends. For their attire, we had to figure out if we wanted to let them wear the same color as our dresses, but since Maggie and I have two different color dresses, that idea was not ideal. We had to decide before the photo shoot. So, we decided that the guys would wear black slacks, white dress shirts, black dress shoes, and no tie ( which for some reason they felt weird about not wearing one). For the girls, we decided on all white short dresses (2 of which we said can wear long dresses to even it out) and nude heels. Maggie and I decided to make them floral head-dress. Maggie and I had to make all the head dresses (there are plenty of DIY tutorials all over pinterest) for the 10 girls, and my little sister and for the both of us. We bought the materials from Joann's fabric store. We purchased fake flowers with wire based stems (so that it is bendable and you can form it to people's head easily) and hot glue guns.

Traditions:

-dance: The traditional waltz will always be in debuts, but in our waltz we added our own little twist. Usually, there will also be another performance from the debutant, but since Maggie and I were running out of time we had to cancel that out. Our theme song was Lemonade (Jeremy Passion's version). Maggie and I love that song, we completely thought it was right for us to use is as our waltz song. We had paired our court by height, (because we really do care about height differences). There were 11 pairs (including Maggie and I and our escorts). We choreographed our waltz with Yasmine, we took some of her moves (from her quinceañera) and made new ones in between a less than a week or so. The dance varied from moves such as the shmoney dance, turns and twists, the box-waltz, some dip and guys kneeling. So for a whole month, we had practiced with our court in our complex. But since our complex has rules on loud music, our practice locations varied from the clubhouse, to the tennis court, to the garage. What made it difficult was that our court was big and there wasn't enough space in the middle of the clubhouse to show off everybody. Another difficulty was that we could not get all of our court member at the practice days, so each practice people were missing a partners, which also meant that they were missing on the new introduced moves (Maggie and I often had to substitute to keep the places in place, so we knew the boys part and the girls part). There was a point that the guard stopped our practice, and it left James rapping about it! Not until the day of our debut, that we did get our full and first practice together as a whole court.

-candles: 18 candles were the closest female family members and friends of the debutant. What the 18 candles do are light the candle and say a little speech for the debutant. For our 18 roses, we made a list prioritizing family first, such as our mother, sister, grandmothers, and aunts. Then the rest of the spots were the closest girlfriends. The physical candles were those plain white stick candles. What we did not think of was that the candles melt once it was lit. We were not ready for the wax to drip on people's hand (make sure to have a wax catcher on your candles!).

Our mother was the last one to give the last candle. I never actually knew that she was going to do it because, she refused to do it when we asked her, but she did it anyways.

-18 roses: The 18 roses is another traditional waltz dance with the debutante's closest male family members and friends. We prioritized our uncles/families. We also included our tennis and track coaches in it, because we considered them as one of our fatherly figure throughout our short time in the U.S.. Since we are twins, we couldn't prioritized who dances first with the roses. So we cut the number in half. Maggie had 9 roses and I had 9, and we dance at the same time. Our playlist for the 18 roses was basically maroon 5's songs.

-Father & Daughter dance: This dance was different for us. Since we are twins, it was hard to choose who dances first with our dad or who's entering from which side. The night before our debut, we finally decided that all three of us would enter together. With one twin on each side of my dad, we bow and twirl together and I get the first dance, then Maggie . The song for our dance, was the Last dance with my father by Luther Vandross.

-video presentation: I was in charge of the video presentation. It was basically a 9 minute slide show of Maggie and I growing up. We used old photos to photos from the debut photo shoot in the video. The video had 3 songs, Sugar by Maroon 5, Brighter than the sun by Colbie Caillat, and Rude by Magic.

#Debut #18th #birthday #legal #tradition #Filippino