by PNA
ILOILO CITY — A day after Valentine’s, 44 couples in Cabatuan town, Iloilo province declare their life-long commitment to each other not through wedding rings, but through “love locks”.
Mayor Ronilo Caspe, in a phone interview on Friday, said each couple was given a love lock with their names engraved on it. The Cabatuan local government hosted the extraordinary annual civil mass wedding
To seal their love, the couples fastened the locks in a love birds’ cage located in the town’s public plaza. After which, they tossed their keys in the “Fountain of Love”, Caspe said.
“We have a lot of unmarried couples because weddings, especially church weddings, are expensive,” Caspe said, adding that children usually encounter problems in their birth certificates because of their unmarried parents.
Since Caspe took office in 2013, the local government unit shouldered the expenses of the annual mass wedding.
“We want to give them decent wedding ceremony. We want weddings to legitimize their children,” he said.
The decorations was provided by the Local Civil Registry, he said.
He added that couples, even those who are not part of the mass wedding, are also welcome to use the love birds’ cage and the “Fountain of Love”.
He said that it is the town’s monthly practice to conceptualize themes and put on designs at the municipal plaza during special celebrations.
The move of the local government unit gathered around more couples, not only from Cabatuan, but also from neighboring towns.
“February is love month so we put up hearts decorations and even a place for ‘hugot lines’ for the public to enjoy,” he said.
