NICO Daayata, 64, and his bride, Crestina Aceron, 58, are among the 64 other happy couples that were married in a heartwarming ceremony Saturday in Barangay Mambuaya, a village 24 kilometers from the city.
Emotions ran high as Mayor Rolando Uy officiated the mass wedding for the couples who all came dressed to the occasion with their families.
“Maybe it was love at first sight. We just met a couple of months ago,” Aceron said.
Daayata said his first wife died last August and by the time he met Crestina last November, he thought it was time to move on.
Aceron said she had been a widow for a year when she lost her first husband to cancer.
“Our children were already old and they did not pose any objections to our marriage,” she said.
Daayata and Aceron won the P5,000 prize money for the longest kiss contest among the couples.
All of the couples went home with a lechon, a bag of groceries, a ten-kilo bag of rice, cake, and P5,000 cash assistance from the city government which has been supporting these mass wedding events.
Mayor Uy said he supports this program because families are the foundation of a stable society.
“A good family (becomes) productive unlike broken homes,” said Uy who supported the program after he was elected chairman of Barangay Carmen here in early 2000.
Evangeline Tapangan, City Civil Registrar said more than 400 couples have been wed in seven barangays since Uy assumed as city mayor last June.
“The oldest couple we have is a 70-year-old couple in Barangay Gusa,” Tapangan said.
She said all the couples have produced documents required by the new Family Code of the Philippines and Civil Registry Law before they are wed.
