Wedding Planning Updates – 2nd week of June

Last weekend was mini-vacation weekend. My family went for a quick 2-day trip on the outskirts of Delhi, and I had my first – ok, first two – spas!

And yes, my whole routine’s haywire now. Have not worked out since last Friday! But, I’ll get back to it starting tomorrow.

Other developments have been taking place –

Wedding Lehenga – Found & Lost(?)

I found the perfect lehenga a few weeks back. But I looked at the price tag and I was like ack! But, we found a designer who said they could make an exact copy. I was so psyched – yes! I’ll wear the prettiest lehenga on planet Earth and it will still be in my budget! Taayein-taayein-phiss happened yesterday – I saw the sample yesterday (the designer did one kali/panel of the lehenga) and my whole family was majorly dissapointed. We realised that maybe the designer’s designing sensibilities did not match ours, and we’re wondering where the hell to get it made from now! Mother wants to drag me all over Delhi this weekend to find a new wedding lehenga that’s readymade. *sigh* So we seem to be back to square one, unless we feel confident about finding some other designer who can make an exact copy.

Photographer/Videographer – save me from “Madam idhar dekho! Face neeche, aankhein upar!”

Spending a bomb on photographers and videographers is no longer making sense. In an Indian wedding, it seems it’s typical to chalk out a budget but then slowly realise that you’ve overshooting your budget by quite a bit. The lehengas you like are pinching (ok, more like tearing apart) your pockets, you go with the caterer who’s slightly over budget because you don’t want to compromise on quality of food (come on, you know you can’t go cheap here), the trousseau budget is expanding manifold because you just didn’t realise how much a suit and saree for a formal occassion cost…the list is endless. Back to the point – I have decided that we are not shelling out huge sums for capturing wedding memories. My fiancé came up with a great idea – we’ll buy an SLR camera which his sisters/friends will use to click pics at his house (which we will then gift to his sister as she’s always wanted one), I’ll borrow an SLR camera from a friend for getting more candid shots at my house, we’ll buy one handycam to capture videos at his house, and I already have an SLR camera that I want to use for video-shooting as it has HD video! We’ll also, of course, have our normal studio wala team for covering the ceremonies. But what will be required on our part is some amount of effort – explaining to him what kind of photos we want, what kind of video editing we want, etc. So, for example, I want candid plus documentary plus some posed images – I’ll tell him “bhaiya, please don’t flash very bright lights in people’s eyes while you are trying to take a candid photo, because then they will become concious” and “bhaiya, please don’t take videos of people posing for the camera becuase I don’t want videos of people stuck in time – that’s what a camera is meant to do!” However, I’m still open to ideas – in case anyone knows how I can afford a Vishal Punjabi and Vinayak Das/Snigdha Sheel, please feel free to get in touch with me at thedelhibride at gmail dot com or leave a comment here. Even if your idea involved fund raising to be able to afford that gorgeous lehenga, and these amazing photographers/videographers! Please!

MNBB (My Nose But Better)

I’ve suffered from blackheads my whole life. Never cared too much about it. Now suddenly, I do. Everyone says I need to get a pre-bridal package done at a salon. Ummm…why? Can’t I just take better care of myself over the next few months and look my best anyway? Well, it’s not that I’m against salon treatments. They’re just alien to me. But, I do want to get rid of these damn blackheads. So last night I used a scrub, then steamed, and then used a multani mitti mask (Himalaya’s). My skin looks absolutely great today, but the blackheads are still there (duh!). I even scrubbed tomato on my nose a few days back. Not much of a difference really. I’ve been scouring the pages of all the top Indian beauty blogs on how to remove blackheads, and man oh man! There are sooo many ways, apparently. Will any of them work on me? Stay tuned to find out.

Ciao for now!