Christmas with Paolo & Dina Tantoco: A love story from Boston to Sta. Elena

It’s Christmas in the home of young Rustan’s executives Paolo and Dina Tantoco. In their house at Sta. Elena Golf & Country Estate’s Sierra Madre enclave, the vibe is distinctly country with just a little bit of city.

Surrounded by greens and a garden walled by lush bamboo trees, which they grew just a couple of years ago, the laidback vibe is continued indoors. The wooden furnishings are made colorful by tabletop décor from Rustan’s — snowmen, Santa Claus, candy canes, and wreaths wrapped around the staircase, on lights and doorways.

Dina Tantoco, Rustan’s marketing communications manager, says, “My mother-in-law Nena Tantoco helped us to decorate the house for Christmas. We wanted it to be very festive since there’s a lot of gatherings here with family and friends.”

In fact, one of the recent gatherings the couple hosted in Sta. Elena was their second wedding just two months ago — this time in a church and attended by their families and friends. The wedding was held at Montecito Chapel and the reception at Sta. Elena Clubhouse.

Walking down the aisle the second time, Dina says, “I felt so happy. I was smiling and laughing the whole time. Though the first wedding was happy, too, this one felt different, it was just more relaxed.”

Paolo and Dina had a civil wedding in Las Vegas 10 years ago when they were living together in Boston. They didn’t exactly elope but it was a spur-of-the-moment decision. “Paolo asked for my dad’s permission the day before we were getting married.”

Paolo Tantoco, who’s the administration manager of Rustan’s, says, “Everything happened really quick. She gave birth, we were living in an apartment in Boston, and we were on vacation in Vegas. We said, let’s get married in a Vegas chapel, let’s do it! We wanted an Elvis chapel but my sister convinced us to pick a nice place. It was called The Monaco — a typical Vegas hotel with function rooms, wedding packages and a chapel. We were married by a pastor.” 

In contrast, their second wedding last October had everybody in the family; their daughters Alana, 10, and Bella, 7, were flower girls, and son Zach, 4, was the ring bearer.  

“I feel like we’re more in harmony now,” says Dina. “Everything just feels blessed.”

 “Our special friends that we grew up with were at the wedding,” says Paolo. “My groomsmen were my cousins and best friends from when I was seven years old, and until now we’re all still very close.” 

The Tantoco home in Sta. Elena was the couple’s primary home until Paolo enrolled at the Asian Institute of Management (AIM) in January this year for his Executive MBA.

“For us right now, it’s a weekend home,” says Dina. “We’re renting a place in Rockwell because he has a rigorous schedule. But before that, this was our permanent home and if we had a choice, we would live here completely and we did that for a year and a half.”

Paolo says, “Even in Boston we were nomads. We were living in an apartment first, then moved to a house when we had Alana, then moved back here in an apartment in Pasig, then moved to Rockwell in a two-bedroom flat, which became small for us when we had Zach, then San Lorenzo in a three-bedroom house. Then this house in Sta. Elena came and we said, ‘This is it.’”

Paolo and Dina say even the kids are different when they’re in Sta. Elena. “They spend a lot of time outdoors. They’re not looking at their iPads or watching TV. They’re playing outside, they’re going to the Fun Farm, they’re rollerblading and swimming in my mom’s house or the club pool.”

Paolo adds, “My dad (Rico Tantoco, who built Sta. Elena Golf & Country Estate) asked me, ‘What do you think this place is, a weekend home or a home home?’ I said, it’s both. It’s like a convertible because it’s not too far from the city if you’re willing to do an hour’s commute. It’s not bad at all. It’s a 15 to 20-minute difference from Alabang and we’re right off the exit.”

Paolo plays golf and sometimes bikes around Sta. Elena with his friends. “Most of the good bike trails start from Sta. Rosa. I bike from the house, I don’t have to put the bike in the car and drive to a location to start biking.”

“That’s why his friends visit often, after they bike, they just hang out in the house. The kids and I go around inside the village. The first time Bella saw the plant makahiya, she was like, ‘Oh my god!’ I used to play with that a lot from the time I was two years old, but with all the urban sprawl, they just disappeared.”

When they were renovating the house (it was originally owned by a couple and the husband got transferred abroad), they wanted it to reflect their love for the outdoors.

Paolo wanted the house to be very bright, to have a lot of wood. They knocked down some walls to open up the space, re-oriented the staircase, made the bedrooms larger, and got the lot beside it so they would have a big yard.

“I love a lot of natural materials like wood,” he says. “I love trees. Like my dad, the garden for me is very important. I like a lot of greenery, earth colors, stone. We pretty much tore down everything except the roof.”

They also incorporated their furniture — like an upholstered wooden living room set — from when they were living in Boston, the city where they met again after a long time (they were childhood friends and teenage barkadas), fell in love, and became parents to their firstborn, Alana. 

“Living in Sta. Elena reminds us of living in Boston, maybe because of the space,” says Dina. “It’s not as busy as living in the US, where we had our 9 to 5 jobs, but the busy part was taking care of our baby together. Paolo’s sister Bea was there at the time, too, so we would all just chip in and cook dinner.”

In Boston, Paolo would regularly call up his Tita Nedy Tantoco’s cook and ask for the family recipes — the ones handed down in the family by his Lola Glecy Tantoco, founder of Rustan’s.

“I’d talk to the cook and write down the recipes and then do them on my own, things like pochero and osso buco. I love to cook because I love to eat. My sisters Bea and Kat, they both cook well, too. We’re a family who likes to midnight snack. We’d always bump into each other in the middle of the night raiding the fridge.”

What Paolo insisted on changing when they were renovating the house was the floor. He had narra planks installed on the ground and second floors, which he got from his father Rico.

“My dad has banked a lot of hardwoods like narra, molave and  yakal.”

You see molave wooden shelves in the bathrooms, or with the bookcase and shelves they retained form the original house, Paolo would clad them in hardwood.

The china cabinet in the dining room also reflects their lives from Boston to Manila, and their families. One set — their starter set, if you will — is from an Italian family in Boston.

“I was doing carpentry on the side in Boston,” says Paolo. “I did the varnishing of the deck around the pool of a very big house owned by a rich family, and they gave me these plates. I love building things with my hands. I like making sculptures using a lot of wire, copper and metal. Maybe I also got it from my mom, what I was surrounded by growing up.”

Some of the plates — like the gold-leafed set — are from Dina’s grandmother and namesake, Lola Bernardina Jacinta.

It’s a Sunday and we are talking in Dina’s favorite spot in the house: the living room, from where you can see the garden.

“I just sit here and look outside, I don’t need a TV,” she says.

The kids don’t need one either. Alana and Bella are rollerblading on the street in front of the house, Zach is indoors now playing on the narra floor.

Pretty soon, Paolo and Dina bundle the kids into the car for the drive back to Manila. They look reluctant to leave. “They can barely wait for Fridays when we go back here,” Dina says.

In front of the house as the evening begins to settle in, the place is quiet except for some birds chirping. Dina smiles and says, “Even our family life has changed here. We have a lot more quality time together.”

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Check out the author’s travel blog at www.findingmyway.net; follow her on Twitter and Instagram @iamtanyalara.

For more information on Sta. Elena Golf & Country Estate, call sales director Nerissa Capistrano at 0919-9114616. Visit www.staelena.com.