ewly wed Donita Rose dishes gleefully about her weding day, her honemooon night, and keeping house for two.

Donita Rose is young, beautiful, and talented. She has graced the cover of TIME, has launched a hundred and one products, and until recently, jammed music almost 24 hours a day on MTV Asia. So what could we homemakers possibly have in common with someone like her?

In a word: budget!

Yes, inevitably a woman walks down the aisle and realizes that what once was hers is no longer solely hers--and that means going down and dirty with your significant other about such hopelessly unromantic things as spending dos and don'ts.

"Eric and I want to save. We want to be good stewards of our home so we have a budget. But goodness, I don't even have enough money to take a taxi anymore. Imagine! Donita Rose! Walking! Taking the bus!" Donita says while laughing out loud.

One month after
It is the 11th July. Donita Rose has been Mrs. Eric Villarama for a month and two days-not surprisingly, she still has stars in her eyes.

"Has it been a month already? Oh, no! We forgot to celebrate! It's just that time has been going by so fast," she says.

Like most newlyweds, Donita can't stop talking about the wedding. And with her friends Raymund Isaac (who shot her wedding) and Krist Bansuelo (who did her makeup for the big day) around, she has found a ready audience for her account.

"I would have liked it better if we only had a little bit more sun," Donita says. Raymund is shocked: "A bit more sun? It was perfect! Didn't you see the pictures? The lighting was perfect!"

"Just a tiny bit more sun," insists Donita, who is legendary for obsessing about details. "You know, Eric and I keep playing the special over and over again. We just love it! And I'm getting e-mail from people telling me how inspired they were."

Raymund starts telling her of the little logistical snafus that happened on that fateful day. But apparently Donita shut it all out. "I could hear some of the stuff that was going on," she says, "but I made up my mind that it was going to be my day. Nothing was going to ruin it. It was my day."

And Raymund could only smile because, well, it was certainly her day.

Home improvements
After the cake had been cut and the wedding gifts had been opened, Donita and Eric flew home to Singapore after spending glorious days honeymooning in Disneyland and Maui.

"We came back June 23 and the very next day, Eric had to go back to work!" the still blushing Donita says. While house-hunting would have been part of their immediate agenda, Donita's landlord had a most pleasant gift for the newlyweds.

"They like me so much that they brought down the rent significantly," shares Donita. And like most budget-conscious wives, she asked for a calculator, did a little bit of math, and proudly announced, "Almost 2S percent. They brought it down almost 2S percent! And they told us we could stay for as long as we want. It's only a one-bedroom apartment but it's really nice. And it's right next to Orchard Road."

Eric moved in ("He left what we call the frat house"), brought all his clothes ("He had so many"), and left for work the next morning, which is when Donita happily went decorating. She got rid of all her extra stuff ("I didn't realize I had so many things"), and brought in all the wedding presents. She also painted the apartment walls white. What color were the walls before? "Oh, it was white. I just wanted a new coat so we start off fresh."

Donita insists she's very domestic. She keeps house. She cooks. She cleans. "I even do the laundry but please, no ironing or folding."

Letting go
While Donita was trying on her new role as wife and homemaker, she was also shedding off her old skin as adorable rollicking VJ for MTV Asia.

When she went to the MTV offices to get her last paycheck, she says, "Everybody was so nice. I even got a big tax rebate!" While she would have loved to stay, Donita says she knew the time had come for new challenges.

Asked to describe her stint at MTV, the perky VJ says she can't call it work. "I'd wake up each morning and I was ready to go. I wanted to entertain. I wanted to make people laugh. I loved doing it. If I didn't, I would've gone insane. I would've barfed all over the place."

When she wasn't in front of the cameras, Donita was listening to CDs, watching videos, and surfing the Internet for little bits and pieces of music factoids that could make her spiels fun. And she was a delight to watch. From awkward and fumbling, she went on to spin videos like she was born to do it. She was spirited and playful, but also smart-she knew the bands and songs she was talking about.

It's not surprising then that when Donita informed her bosses at MTV that she was tying the knot, they asked her to delay the wedding for another year. But Donita could not see postponing it. She explains: "We've been engaged for a year and a half. When you've been together for that long and you're not sexually involved, it puts a strain on the relationship. The temptation is too great."

While the bosses at MTV said nothing, Donita knew it was time for her to go. Besides, as she herself points out, "I can't go on wearing ponytails forever." She is, after all, 28 years old.

Still, it was hard to let go. Sometimes, in between her redecorating and her laundry, she would get attacks of depression. "I'm making my show reel so I've been viewing all my tapes for the past four and a half years. And wow! It was fun!"

No slowing down
At first, she was in limbo. Donita went from a wedding-honeymoon high to going home to Singapore with no job and no future prospects. But once she talked to her managers in Genesis, her management company in Manila, and fasted for the right answer ("I skipped dinner and since I don't eat breakfast it means I only ate lunch"), the wheels started turning.

Indeed, when we did this pictorial, Donita had just got off the plane from Singapore. Her schedule was such that she had no time to check in at a hotel to freshen up. She immediately went to her dermatologist to have a big zit on her forehead injected away, took a shower in Raymund's office (the once rumored prima donna is apparently no more), and wolfed down slice after slice of Shakey's Pizza ("I'll go aheadha, I'm really hungry!"). She was in Manila for a week to shoot a commercial, then she was off to the States for a week, then back again to Manila to finish other commitments. Apparently, marriage is not slowing her down any.

The first plan of attack was for Genesis to hook her up with agents in other Asian countries. "That was a problem. Nobody represented me in other countries so even if they were interested, they wouldn't know how;"

The next strategy: go on auditions. "That's why I'm doing my show reel in MTV because I want to apply for jobs internationally. That's the only way." This woman knows about going for the big dreams. "When I wanted to audition for MTV," she remembers, "everybody said don't even bother but I got it. When I auditioned for Legacy, they thought I didn't stand a chance but I got in." Legacy is the movie she did with Baywatch hunk David Hasselhoff.

Although she wouldn't reveal for which companies she's planning to audition, Donita says, "It would still be entertainment. I think news is boring. I mean, no offense, I watch the news but I can't do that. I could never be serious."

A business with her husband is also in the works. "It's the best way for us to own our time," explains Donita-. "Right now; it's like we're living to work when we should be working to live. He goes to work at nine in the morning and comes home at 10 at night--it's ridiculous! We want time together. We want to take vacations together. We're partners in life already; so we might as well be partners in business."

Becoming we
"I never realized that I had to submit so much!" Donita complains. As she's learning, when a person marries, she is suddenly not just an "I" anymore but a "we." And sometimes, going from "I" to "we" is such a tough thing that two things can happen: The person forgets about the "I" and loses herself in the "we," or she just leaves the "we" altogether. Of course, there are the happy-ending stories where the two "I's" become a "we"-which Donita is determined to have.

To get there she subscribes to the teachings of her faith (she and Eric are Born-Again Christians), that in a marriage woman must submit to man. "I'm reading this book, The Power of a Praying Wife by Stormie Omartian," she shares. "It's awesome. It says that man is the head and woman is the heart. And woman should respect man and all the decisions he makes." Of course, Donita has only been married for a month. As many wives learn over time, marriage is a tricky balance.

However, Donita admits, "It's so hard! Like, we had a budget for the wedding. And I went three times over. I wanted everything to be perfect. Of course, now I know the wedding is not the be-all and end-all of the world. So I asked for his forgiveness, for not listening to him."

Making love
As they've made known in past interviews, it is against Eric and Donita's faith to have pre-marital sex, so for the lovebirds the honeymoon was a big release. And indeed, for quite a time during this interview, Donita couldn't help but talk about sex.

She gave us a preview of her wedding night. "We were in our room and Eric said, 'I'll just take a shower.' Then we realized, why are we taking separate showers? We're already married! It was really funny!"

She told us about her visit to her gynecologist. "She was showing me all the different types of contraceptives. And she showed this IUD thing. I was like, what? You're going to put that thing where?!"

When we asked her what the best advice she got on marriage was, she told us this story: "There was this really old couple. I think they were about 80 plus years old. And they've been married for maybe 50 years. And the man said, 'When we have a fight, I just bring her to the bedroom and it would be okay.' And they were very sweet, they were holding hands and giggling."

When we asked her what other things she has discovered about Eric since they tied the knot, she could only blurt out, "Hmmm, I don't know. They're all about sex!"

We love her for her sheer candidness. Obviously, marriage is now Donita's new stage for her passion and energy.- -