So I didn’t realize until now that I never shared my wedding photos with you. How bad of me! I’ve been hiding behind all these other beautiful weddings here on the BFIW that I never thought to share my own.
Tisk tisk.
I have shared a few of our events like the haldi and mehndi ceremonies. And a friend wrote guide on how to dress and dance at a sangeet, a very good read I must say! But yes, I've hidden my wedding photos from you.
Not anymore.
So, without further ado, I present my wedding!
Our wedding took place in February 2011 in Mumbai, India. We had a traditional Maharastrian CKP wedding with a lot of Gujarati elements. We had everything from the rukwath to the panetar. My mom’s family is Gujarati Jain, so we incorporated a lot of snacks (ghatiya, oondhio) at the tea times as well as Jain food at all the functions.
(You can imagine having a whole bunch of Jains hanging out with carnivorous Mahastrians would be incredibly entertaining.)
Because the wedding itself was Maharastrian, my mom bought me a beautiful panetar (I didn't get a gharchola though, boooo). The panetar is a traditional Gujarati wedding outfit, which honestly, can look like a Christmas tree, and the gharchola is the patterned, bandhani cloth worn on the bride's head. It was one of my wedding outfits that in total, were less than $2000.
The wedding jewelry I wore, wasn't bling-bling but was sentimental: the set was forged in 1983 by three nanis on my mother's side. That set would eventually become my wedding present.
My grandmother on my father's side, also left me a necklace. We are not entirely sure when she wore it, but we know it was with her for a while (one of the earrings had gone missing!). Because she had already passed on before my wedding, my athiya, dad’;s sister, presented it to me. It was one of the only moments I cried during our wedding week.
Our wedding pretty full of craziness. We had more than 50 guests fly in for the wedding week. We even threw them on a BEST bus to go shopping. And let’;s just say the men looked just as dazzling as the women. We also had a networking night for everyone to meet, drink beer, eat tandoori, and play games.
Most friends stayed on in India and made it the trip of the year. Several took trains to Delhi, others to Kerala, and even all the way to Shimla. Our group was everywhere! You can check out Tinna’s post on her experience at our wedding and traveling India.
We didn’t have a professional wedding planner but my dad and his brother were truly, planning extraordinaires. And a best friend, S, was like the best-man-maid-of-honor-bad-ass person. Without her, I would have been very confused at times, and with her, she rallied the troops of friends to be supportive. Lesson to learn: have a bad ass friend.
The wedding ceremony started early in the morning, 9AM. For me, I woke up at 4.30AM to pretty much a bunch of grumpy people, including myself. I didn’t get anything to eat until 7AM when the kitchen finally decided to send me chai! And then my breakfast was eaten by someone else! Yea, no one tells you these things before you get married.
After I finally got ready and headed down, we were able to start the wedding. Because Peter’s family is Swedish, their native language is not English. We had one of my dad’s uncles help them out with everything the pandit said and did.
From there, the ceremony seemed to flash by, even though it was four hours long. There was a breakfast table with fresh dosas, idlies, and coffee for all the guests. Friends were very happy, and stuffed.
After the wedding lunch, we had a few hours to rest and relax. I had about two hours before I had to get ready for the reception. I am not sure what happened along the way (I think I feel asleep!), but I started getting ready an hour later than was supposed to. Opps!
The reception was typical Indian style with a buffet of different foods (chaat, wraps, Jain, curries) and open seating. We opted not to take photos on the stage and visit all our guests personally. That was a really great idea from a personable level, but a really bad idea from a photographic level.
In the end, our wedding was the summer camp trip of a lifetime. I just couldn't have had a better experience.
I’ll shut up now, and share the wedding photos! Thanks to Christopher Grant Photography, Andrew Rosychuk, and a lot of crowdsourcing.
This is what happens to a very tired Indian bride.
Well, hope you enjoyed our wedding as much as we did!