Today’s wedding venue was originally an anniversary gift

IT WOULD HAVE been easier for the Liamzon family to sell Villa Milagros, the one-hectare property their grandparents built up at the foothills of the Sierra Madre by Rizal province.

Isidoro Liamzon, a banker from the 1960s, had the house built between 1965-69 as a 35^th wedding anniversary gift to his wife, Milagros.

It is a grand house, for sure: think a port-cochere with a separate portico, multiple staircases, marble flooring in two stories, and grand chandeliers made with porcelain flowers that the late Mr. Liamzon chose with his wife during a trip in Europe.

The house, which had served as a weekend home for the senior Liamzons, had been abandoned for 45 years, with Andrea Liamzon describing it as a white elephant.

“He died when my dad was 13,” said Ms. Liamzon. “His lifetime goal was to build 11 banks for all of his kids — it didn’t happen. He passed away after building the 7^th one.” Ms. Liamzon is Isidro’s granddaughter, and Managing Director of Villa Milagros.

The younger Ms. Liamzon quit her corporate job, set up a company to formally manage the house, and spent two years cleaning, rewiring, and renovating. The house opened in 2017 as an events venue, and has had the honor of hosting events for people such as Francis Libiran, Bangs Garcia, and Mike Tan, and will probably be remembered as the venue of the wedding between Aljur Abrenica and Kylie Padilla.

Ms. Liamzon took ����ý and other guests on a tour of the house last month. It’s about a 30-minute drive from Commonwealth’s Sandiganbayan, and the sound of trickling water from fountains, as well as the very obvious view of the house’s tower greeted us and set expectations.

Ms. Liamzon showed us the bridal suite, which was the house’s former library, done up in pale colors and dominated by a bed. Photographs of the family were up on the shelves in silver frames. “We just wanted to remind people that this used to be a family home,” she said.

She took us to three more bedrooms, which could serve as bedrooms for the bride’s entourage, noting that the furniture is a mix between her own family’s collection of antiques, as well as a few new pieces. “They really feel like they’re at home. That’s kind of what we were going for,” she said.

Ms. Liamzon then took us to the gardens, with covered walkways and such, with the tour ending at the former poolhouse, now called the North Wing. Measuring 400 sqm., with a ceiling six meters high, it serves as the banquet hall.

In practical terms, this is where the magic of Villa Milagros is: at the base price of about P150,000 (it can go up, depending on the season), a family gets three amenities: the bedrooms, the gardens, and the banquet hall, which would have taken three separate bookings in other venues. Moreover, the events place only accepts one booking per day, lending exclusivity to a special day. One can even have the house and grounds hired for photoshoots, at about P20,000 for six hours.

Of course, we wouldn’t call it magic if it were simply about the prose of practicality.

“It’s really about the feeling. Weddings are very sentimental events. It’s like they come here, they fall in love,” she said. Perhaps it also goes back to the story of love that built the house in the first place: “You can feel that my grandparents really wanted to build something that would last.”

More than the promises of romantic love, however, the house’s revival as a padlocked property is a story of family and heritage. “We unlocked it, and made it accessible to people for it to be enjoyed,” she said.

Reflecting on the two years of renovation and the continuing work that it takes to keep the place, ����ý asked if selling the house was ever an option. “It would have been easier… but then we would have lost our heritage.” — Joseph L. Garcia