Hi jerebeat, I'm also from Quebec and I started this whole process 1 year ago, including the marriage.
First, I visited already my wife once in 2011 before getting married on my second trip in 2013. We kept contact all those years, everyday, and you have to keep evidence of it. Also your airline tickets, receipts of money or gifts you would send there, chatlogs, emails. You should prioritize the diversity over the quantity.
I got civil married there in the Philippines and here are the steps I followed:
1. After you arrive, you need to go to the canadian embassy in Manila to get a paper called "Statement In-lieu of Certification of Non-impediment to Marriage " which is required by the Philippines. You will need to bring birth certificate, statutory declaration that you are not already married and court judgement of divorce if you are divorced. Office hours of embassy is mornings only. You can find address and office hours online.
2. You need to apply for your marriage license in the city you're planning to get married. You can find the form at the town hall of the said city. I don't know about church wedding but I guess the process is the same. You will need paper from embassy, birth certificate translated in english if its in french and court judgement if you're divorced.
3. You will be invited to follow a pre-marital seminar about life together, contraception, etc. This is mandatory by the Philippines and is lasting half a day. They will issue a certificate that you will need to apply for marriage.
4. After you got your license, which can take up to 1 month, you can apply for the ceremony of the marriage at the same town hall. You will have to wait 10 days for the "publication of the bans" (not sure about the term, sorry I'm french). You will be assigned a marriage date by the clerk at town hall.
5. We got married in the judge's office at justice hall of the city we applied. The ceremony lasted for something like 15-30 mins. Try to get some family members of both sides to attend, its looks more genuine to CIC, and have somebody to take pictures if you're not hiring photographer.
Always remember that processing times are long in the Philippines, there's a lot of bureaucracy and you have to wait in line and pay fee for everything so be prepared for that.
Also keep in mind that you are rich to them as a foreigner, that's the culture there. So you can expect you will get the max fee for everything, that people will expect tip from you. There is also a culture of "pay to make it faster" that they call "fixing" which I used for the prompt processing of marriage license.
I stayed 1 month there to do all those things plus honeymoon trip to a resort in Phils. Don't plan shorter time than 1 month because you will be lack of time. I applied in a big city (Quezon city), timelines may be shorter in province.
That's for the marriage, I can post step-by-step guide for immigration application later if you like.
Sorry for the long post, I hope it helped you. Good luck!
