A bachelorette party, as most of us know it, follows a pretty standard formula. The bride’s girlfriends plan it a few weeks before the wedding, everyone shows up in themed outfits, and the bride spends one memorable night celebrating with the women who know her best.

There are games, drinks, inside jokes, and stories that will be retold for years—or maybe conveniently forgotten the next morning. It is a way of showing the bride how much she is loved and celebrated as she enters this next chapter of her life, as loudly as we can.

It is quite simple and straightforward—until, unfortunately, things do not go according to plan.

For Chari Trinidad-Mendoza, nothing about the road to her wedding followed a normal timeline.

The original plan was a beautiful celebration in Tagaytay overlooking Taal Lake in 2020. But the volcanic eruption in January of that year left the whole city buried in ashes. They tried to move the ceremony to Manila, but the pandemic soon followed, quietly dismantling all plans for a wedding ceremony.

A civil wedding eventually took the place of the celebration they had dreamed of, and life filled in the rest. Chari and her husband, Marvin Mendoza, went on to grow their family to include three children—two daughters and a son.

When Chari and her husband, Marvin, decided to finally have an official wedding, they set their sights on Paris—a dream ceremony at Chateau de Champlatreux in Chantilly on May 22, 2026. Her friends were over the moon for her. We wanted to give her the bachelorette she never got. As we tried to figure out the timing, the world, once again, had other plans.

In the months leading up to her wedding, the situation in the Middle East was escalating in a way that made everyone nervous. With Dubai and the UAE being the most common stopover for flights from Manila to Europe, the unrest added a layer of anxiety on top of an already high-pressure season. Chari was coordinating vendors across time zones, managing all the logistics of an international wedding, raising three kids, and doing all of this against a backdrop of genuine uncertainty about whether flights would even go smoothly. Throwing a bachelorette party into that mix would have been one more thing for Chari to manage.

So we made the call to throw a bachelorette party for her afterward. We didn't want to add to her plate, so we simply asked her to save the date for an overnight stay from June 20 to 21, 2026.

We called our version of Chari’s bachelorette the Afterglow Retreat.

There were other name options, like Après Paris, which means "After Paris," so that we could pay homage to her French wedding. But as planning for the weekend took shape, the right word kept finding its way back: Afterglow.

Afterglow is when the excitement of the big day gives way to something deeper and more lasting. It is the warmth that lingers long after, and the glow that truly matters.

Angela Muhlach-Hortaleza, who had been to Nuuk Taal before, knew immediately it was the right venue—lakeside and unhurried. She booked it before any of us could overthink it, and just like that, Chari’s post-wedding bachelorette was officially happening.

The retreat came together the way the best things do, with each person in Chari's life offering what they were best at. Alyana Asistio, also known as Chef Yana of Steak Corner and Meats and Deli Café, volunteered to cook dinner. Elaine Lua of @movewithlane offered to lead a Pilates session before sunset. Diane Yap of Flairfetti handled the florals and décor. Inna Chen-Lao commissioned the custom shirts.

I handled the key visuals and sourcing for the event collateral, the merch, the props, the tote concepts—the typical obsessive creative work I usually channel into our brand launches, except this time with extra TLC for Chari.

I tapped Manila Bulletin Commercial Printing to bring our custom faux newspaper to life, with the headline: "The Bride Is Still Glowing." The merch included custom sage hair clips, personalized lipstick holders and coasters, croissant-shaped pens as an homage to Paris, and on-brand items from Ever Bilena and Hello Glow, from coquette-coded lip tints and sun care sticks to Hello Glow sunglasses, portable fans, and a UV umbrella. Every detail and item was chosen intentionally with Chari’s Afterglow Retreat in mind.

The retreat also had the support of sponsors who made the weekend possible: Ever Bilena, Hello Glow, Careline, Muhlach Ensaymada, BW Women, Flairfetti, Ever Organics, Spotlight Cosmetics, Mkwoodsgreen Corp, and MB Commercial Printing. Chari is a creative director at heart who knows what good aesthetics look like, so we wanted to make sure she felt it from the moment she arrived.

The morning of June 20 started at Little Miss Saldo's in Silang, Cavite, where Angela had arranged for the restaurant to open early at 9:30 a.m., just for our group—a full hour and a half before its usual opening.

We had been planning everything over a group chat, so while we all technically knew each other, this was the first time many of us were actually meeting in person. There's something about sharing a table with people who love the same person that dissolves the awkwardness immediately, and sure enough, it felt like we'd all been friends for years by the end of the first round of coffee. We played Bride Bingo with custom printouts from MB Commercial Printing, laughed too loudly for the hour, and it felt easy right away.

By 2 p.m., we had checked into Nuuk, where we surprised Chari with what I can only describe as a full bride coronation. Not just a sash—a bride tote, bride earrings, bride hairband, bride sunglasses, bride veil, bride fluffy slippers, bride everything. She was, as the girls put it, the "bridest bride of them all!"

And then Chari, being exactly who she is, turned it right around. She bestowed titles on each of us: Angela was crowned the Queen Mother of Ensaymaderia, Diane the Queen Mother of Flowerlandia, Elaine the Crown Princess of Namasteria, among many others. I was given the title of Queen Mother of Beautymeria, which, given my life at Ever Bilena and Hello Glow, felt both deeply accurate and very funny.

Angela had arranged for a professional photographer to document the afternoon, and we made the most of the golden hour. All of us dressed in sage, ivory, and champagne, with Hello Glow umbrellas and shades catching the sun as we held up the custom newspapers like the props they were, as though we were front-page news.

There was one moment during the shoot, looking out at Taal Lake, that I didn't expect to feel what I felt. The first time Chari had planned a wedding, it was supposed to be right here in Tagaytay, with this exact view. The volcano took that from her. Yet, six years later, already married in Paris, here we were, back at that same lake, finally giving her the celebration she never got to hold.

The highlight of the evening was the dinner, which Chef Yana prepared entirely from scratch. We could feel her genuine love and care for Chari in every single bite. She made steak so tender that even after it was reheated—because we were all too deep in conversation to stop and eat on schedule, as all good dinners go—it was still extraordinary. Truffle pasta and steak rice rounded out the mains. For dessert, Alyana's sister-in-law, Ina, baked homemade oatmeal chocolate chip cookies, served alongside Nuuk Ilulli's house-made vanilla ice cream.

We watched the sunset from the balcony as the first courses came out and stayed there long after the candles burned low, talking about life and marriage and kids and girlhood and everything in between.

That night was definitely "girlhood" in its purest form. We were 10 women in total—nine women plus Chari—and it felt like being in a room where everyone was genuinely rooting for you.

A handful of the girls drove back to Manila that night, while a few of us stayed over, stretched the weekend out, and had breakfast the next morning with Taal right there in front of us, slow and peaceful, the kind of morning you don't want to end.

Out of all the bachelorettes and bridal showers I've attended over the years, this one was the most wholesome and the most meaningful. I think a big part of that was the timing. Because we did it afterward, Chari arrived with nothing left to manage. She wasn't running on wedding-week adrenaline or mentally reviewing seating arrangements. She simply showed up as herself, as a woman surrounded by the people who love her, with nowhere to be and nothing to plan.

Perhaps that is why the Afterglow Retreat felt so right. It wasn't about preparing Chari for marriage because she was already six years into a happy one. It was about celebrating the woman behind the bride—the friend, the mother, the wife, and the person we loved long before there was ever a wedding to attend.

Good friends. Great memories. Beautiful beginnings. That's exactly what the weekend was.