Free · For Filipino couples
Handa
Most wedding checklists tell you what to get. Almost none tell you when — and in the Philippines, timing is the whole game.
Half the documents you need have an expiry date. A marriage licence is valid for 120 days from the day it is issued, so getting it eight months early is just as expensive a mistake as getting it too late. That is what Handa is built around.
Handa means prepared. It is also what you call the spread you lay out when people you love come over. Both meanings are the point.
The trap
Your paperwork has a window, not a deadline
Four documents catch almost everyone. Get them too early and you pay for them twice. The kit computes these dates from your own wedding date — this is the shape of the problem.
| Document | Window opens | Why the window |
|---|---|---|
| Marriage licence | 120 days before the wedding | Valid 120 days from issue. Any earlier and it is dead paper before the wedding day. |
| Baptismal and confirmation certificates | About 6 months before | Parishes usually honour them for six months, and only when annotated 'for marriage purposes'. |
| CENOMAR | 3–6 months before | No legal expiry — but most registrars insist on a recently issued copy. |
| Pre-Cana seminar | Commonly 6 months before | Most parishes honour it for six months. A few enforce as little as 120 days. |
What's inside
Six databases and a date engine
Not a checklist you print once. A working planner where one number moves everything else.
Paperwork timeline, four legal tracks
Civil, Catholic, other Christian, and Muslim under PD 1083 — which runs under a different law entirely, with a different registrar. Each track is a saved view, already filtered to just your rows.
One date drives everything
Set your wedding date once and every deadline recomputes — including a 'get it no earlier than' column, so you never queue for a document that will expire before you use it.
Suppliers, in booking order
Some suppliers take one event a day and vanish twelve months out. Others you can get with eight weeks' notice. Sorted so you lock the scarce ones first.
Budget and decisions
A worked example for 150 guests in Metro Manila, and every choice you have to make — attire, food, venue, music, stationery — each with a deadline and the watch-out couples learn the expensive way.
Payments, with a voice-verified column
Hacked accounts get used to send spoofed bank and GCash details to exactly the people who already trust that account. Tick the box only after you have actually heard their voice.
Rescue playbooks
Six weeks out with nothing started. A licence about to expire. A ninong who backed out after the invitations printed. A supplier who ghosted after the downpayment.
About the accuracy
Every claim is tagged by how solid it is
Each row carries a confidence tag — Statute for things fixed in law, Common practice for what most offices actually do, and Confirm locally for anything you genuinely have to ask about yourself — and traces back to a primary source.
Fees and small requirements differ between neighbouring cities, and some tracks are far better documented than others. Where the honest answer is “ask your own registrar,” the kit says so rather than inventing a number. A confident wrong answer would be worse than an honest gap.
It is re-checked every month, and carries the date of the last check. This is general information for planning, not legal advice.
Get the kit
Free, and yours to keep. You’ll also get a note when something in it actually changes — which, given the monthly re-check, is the one mailing list that can promise that.
Handa covers what Nupta doesn’t
There is no guest list in Handa, and that is deliberate. Nupta already handles your guests, your RSVPs, your seating and your story — so the kit covers the paperwork, the money, the decisions and the deadlines. Together, that is the whole wedding.
Nupta is the wedding website built for the way a Filipino wedding actually runs — from the entourage to the last RSVP.
See Nupta