Labors of love

ENGAGEMENT photoshoot by Kasal NY

Since her teen years, Lyna Larcia Calvario has been her family’s designated and volunteer party planner—for babies’ baptisms, kids’ birthdays and teens’ sweet sixteens. She would always come up with nice details to make the parties look unique and feel personal.

Marinduque-born Lyna, who migrated with her family to New York when she was 12, started a wedding planning agency in 2005 after organizing her own wedding to Kirby Calvario, also a talented photographer. She got her first wedding client the same year.

Lyna’s Kasal NY is now listed among the top wedding planners in New York City.

Kasal NY has been named Top Wedding Planner in New York by The Knot magazine for three consecutive years (2010, 2011 and 2012). The leading wedding vendor website, weddingwire.com, also gave Kasal NY their Bride’s Choice Award from 2010 to 2012.

Lyna said she got a clue on how a business was run from her early exposure to the family’s pharmacy business in Marinduque.  At 10, she learned what clients wanted and how to give it to them: “I would recommend the generic brand of a medicine to them, so they could save money. And that would make them happy.”

While pregnant with her son, Matthew, seven years ago, Lyna used her six-month maternity leave to formally learn the ropes about the business of wedding planning. She took a wedding consultancy certificate course and got her business license.

More than business training, however, she believes heart and patience are twin keys to this labor of love.

LYNA LARCIA CALVARIO is founder and artistic director of Kasal NY, a successful wedding planning agency

“Unlike how TV shows usually portray wedding planners as similar to commandos, I’m far from being like that during events, just because I don’t feel that need to do that,” Lyna said.

“Tsaka mas pakikinggan ka nila ’pag kalmado (They are more likely to listen to you if you are calm),” she added. “A wedding involves a lot of mixed emotions coming from the bride being so excited, the groom being nervous, and everything in between, so I think you need heart as well as patience on the wedding day.

Unique wedding

For Lyna, each wedding is unique.

“No cookie-cutter weddings.” That is her mission in planning and making  wedding dreams come true.

“I’m a wedding designer whose signature events are inspired by my couples’ style infused with my flair … I try to capture the couple’s unique taste, incorporating their personalities and preferences—what they love—so that when guests see the wedding, they will say, ‘Oh yeah, it’s definitely their wedding.’

“The first time I meet a couple for consultation, I first ask how they met. I love hearing their love stories and proposal stories.That’s how I start crunching ideas that they may like—and

99 percent of the time, they work.”

My mission in every wedding I plan is to keep the day as smooth sailing as possible to leave the bride and groom stress-free.

Through referrals and rave reviews, Lyna’s list of weddings has expanded from Irish, Indian, Italian, Portuguese, Greek, Haitian, and Filipino, and spans  Jewish, Hindu, Muslim, and Catholic  faiths. She even had her first same-sex wedding in New Jersey this year. Couples have also contracted her to handle their weddings at destinations like Aruba, Mexico, Philippines and across the United States.

“I want to get married again!” said Grace Florento-Dela Cruz, a Kasal NY bride who had so much fun at her own wedding she volunteered to help Lyna do the same for succeeding brides. For Grace’s NYC-themed wedding to her husband Rob in August 2010,  Lyna  created Metrocard-inspired invites, Henri Bendel-inspired table cloths, and used hanging

PINOY-STYLE BONGGA. Instead of a white limousine as a wedding car, Lyna rented a New York double-decker bus for this Big Apple-themed wedding.

Manhattan street names as table numbers. All these details seen after a scenic ceremony at a Manhattan rooftop with the view of the Empire State Building and the New Yorker building.

“I always say to our team and our vendors for the day: ‘It’s not about me or about any of us, it’s about the couple. So let’s work towards one goal and that’s to give them the most unforgettable day of their lives.”

It is safe to say that Kasal NY is  the only Filipino-owned wedding planning company on The Knot’s Best of Weddings list.  This company with humble beginnings and a Tagalog name, is now placed alongside established American companies—companies Lyna had called back in the days when she was looking for internship opportunities in event planning.

Kasal NY now holds office at the Rockefeller Center in Manhattan, New York, with a satellite office in Montreal, Canada, but Lyna and her team can fly anywhere the brides and grooms need them to be.

In 2011, Lyna flew back to Marinduque and threw a Christmas party for a gym-full of less fortunate kids in her hometown. This time, Lyna brought smiles not only to brides, but to kids as well.