colour match

indian weddings are known for their (what seems to be never-ending) gift giving to family members. after the wedding, parents of the bride/groom give a gift to their family; usually this is a sari and/or dress shirt.

for my generation of kids in our family, we've bought saris for close family to wear at the wedding which doubles as their gift after the wedding. two-in-one.. you get your colour scheme without breaking the bank.

the saris i bought for my close cousin-sisters to wear are all odd shades of blue and green. for the international cousins, i was trying to figure out a way to give them the sari colour so that they can sort out their chaniyo and jewellery.

taking a picture and emailing it doesn't work.  the image shown on your screen vs. my screen is not usually the same as far as colours are concerned; they tend to vary slightly.

one of my fois suggested i use bobbins. since the thread is easily found in a wide shade variety. eh.. that costs money. we're in wallet-friendly mode here!

so i decided to visit the paint section at the renovation stores.. those paint swatches are free. :) i went to three different stores and completely raided them of their blues and greens. i was nice and only took one of each. in the end, i think i had about 50 strips of paint cards (with 5 different shades per card). with the slightest difference in colours being covered by these swatches, i was able to find exact matches for all the saris. SUCCESS! i'm impressed by my genius'ness. :)

you know, i wished i'd have asked myself.. what would martha stewart do? make fashion cards of course! i could have easily made these.. i have the tools, supplies, and skills. oh well.. maybe for someone else's wedding.

from the ritzy bee blog

all yellow

this weekend we went around to deliver invites to family.  it's been a weekend full of juice and food.. at every single house we went to.  saturday morning, bhabhi's stomach was getting upset at the thought of all the food we were going to be eating! :S

when delivering an invite to each of your mum's relatives, they give you some turmeric to use for the pithi ceremony.  i guess this goes back to the whole idea that weddings are a community event, not just an event for the bride and groom.  because weddings can be a huge financial burden with all the different rituals that need to take place, everyone pitches in.  considering the cost of tumeric and the amount you would need to coat a person from head to toe, it actually makes sense.

the pithi ceremony is where turmeric, oil, and sometimes rose water are mixed to form a paste which is slathered all over the bride and groom (in separate ceremonies) to "beautify" them.

turmeric is a natural exfoliant, so it's basically softens and slightly lightens your skin (like most exfoliants would..)  turmeric powder can be really, really potent.. some of the tumeric people were giving were really stinking up the car while going from house to house.  i sat there thinking, "this is what i'm going to smell like for two days.."

a few years back, one of my banevis explained to me another reason for the pithi.  back in the day, you would be married when you were kids.  the turmeric served as two purposes: an antiseptic if you were to cut yourself from horsing around.. and as a way to prevent a child from horsing around.  i remember so many people saying after a few hours of getting the pithi applied, they would feel pretty tired and would take more naps than usual.

i suppose i should be excited for all of this.. after all, they're going to turn me into my favourite colour: yellow!  hopefully i don't look like i have jaundice on the wedding day though..

first look

a lot of blogs talk about the "first look" prior to the wedding. despite it being unlucky for the bride and groom to see each other before the wedding, nowadays some meet prior to the wedding to ease those jitters as well as share a very private moment before you take that big step in your life. an alternative i've read is where they blindfold the bride and groom. instead of a "first look", they only get a first touch. they can talk to each other prior to, again to ease jitters, while keeping the excitement of the first look to happen while the bride walks down the aisle.


i would have loved to do the blind fold idea.. unfortunately there isn't time to do this. and i'm sure the parental units would have a fit at the idea.

a more recent tradition in india (and making its way to north america) is the bride greets the groom with a haar after the mother of the bride welcomes the groom to the wedding. i suppose you could call it a first look, indian style. it's still a rather public moment and sometimes involves the interaction of other family members. (the groom would be lifted by brothers and friends making it difficult for the bride to place the haar around the groom without help from her brothers to lift her.)

kiwi suggested we do that. i suggested we don't. :) to be honest, i really like the idea of anxiousness and anticipation. when i walk to the mandap, a large cloth is held in front of kiwi to prevent us from seeing one another. after i sit, my hand is put in kiwi's, while the cloth is still held up between us. a blessing is done, and then the cloth comes down (which is when we're officially married).

since kiwi won't be able to see me while i walk down the aisle, he'll get to experience that feeling of anxiousness while he waits for me. then there's that feeling of anticipation when all he can do is feel my hand in his. at this point, even though he still can't see my face, you can imagine the wave of emotions simply brought on by touch.

i personally consider that to be the intimate moment that's just between you two right in the middle of a chaotic indian wedding. i'm definitely looking forward to it!

pics from dinofa photography, still motion

heavy metal

a few weeks back i got kiwi's wedding ring sorted. *sigh* it took long enough. i went to quite a few people asking about different metals, spent hours online comparing rings with kiwi. in the end he said the choice of ring is up to me since i have no clue what my wedding ring looks like!


i was looking at tungsten and titanium because they're darker metals.. very manly, you know? but speaking to jewellers and doing research on the internet, they all recommended against it. they're hard metals that don't distort their shape with wear and don't scratch easily. the fact it doesn't deform easily is an issue though.. remember my statement, "first comes marriage, then comes weight gain"? well, with titanium and tungsten, you have to get it adjusted accordingly; and adjustments aren't easy with these metals.

a few years back, one of my fois once told me that wedding rings traditionally are supposed to be gold. the more i've read up on different metals, the more that statement made sense. pure gold is the least reactive metal and the most malleable and ductile (deformable without fracture).

for that reason, i ended up going with trusty ol' gold. again with the traditionalist..

the hijra tradition

i just read this blog post about hijras.

when i was fourteen, we travelled to india with my foi's family to see part of the country properly. we travelled mostly the north and west parts of india. while visiting the ganges (a holy river), there was a group of 4-5 hijras that followed us as we walked through the streets of haridwar (i think that's the city we were in.. i don't quite remember :S). now, i don't remember if we gave them any money or just kept walking, but i do remember my fuaji not realising they were hijras. he just thought they were female beggars asking for money.

a few years back, my oldest bhai got married in india. during his santhak (pre-wedding ceremony), a hijra showed up asking for money. dad came up to me after the negotiations to point out the hijra from the window telling me that one did in fact show up. i was incredibly disappointed i missed it! had i known, i would have taken video of the incident. apparently they had the hijra sign a letter stating that money has been given to a person of the hijra community in case another shows up later.

i've been told that if a wedding has happened overseas, hijras will show up to the family's house in india demanding money, otherwise they will curse the newly weds. sometimes a hijra will show up even a month after the wedding asking for money. this doesn't actually happen in north america mainly because hijras don't really exist here (well to my knowledge anyway..). hijras are a unique category that is different from transgender since hijras don't perceive themselves as a man or a woman.

maybe in a warped honour of this "tradition", we could have drag queens during the cocktail hour! how much fun would that be? or, going on a previous idea, we could have one of the drag queens be a fortune teller. i would die of jealousy if someone pulled this off during an indian reception.

bridal attire - going traditional

prior to going wedding shopping, i was told a few do's and don't for my bridal trousseau. i wasn't always given a proper explanation for each thing to keep in mind, which is an unfortunate problem our generation faces - lack of proper explanations for traditions. anyway, back to the do's and don't i was told:

a bride is supposed to wear a sari to her wedding

a few years back, in discussion about bridal wear, i told one of my aunts i wouldn't mind wearing a chaniya choli on my wedding day. she told me that when you pass away, you're supposed to be cremated in your wedding attire since you're supposed to be dressed up like a bride (only if you pass away before your husband; if you pass away as a widow, then they put your wedding attire beside you). she said if you wear a chaniya choli, there's a chance the skirt won't fit when you pass away. i suppose that's a nice way of saying, "first comes marriage, then comes weight gain."

one year on the eighth day of navratri, a group of women attended garba in their wedding saris.  i asked one of my aunts why they were dressed in wedding saris - she explained that the eighth day is very auspicious, so you would wear your wedding sari again. well that didn't really explain much.. i really enjoy going to garba which is why i thought of a chaniya choli to begin with since i would certainly get good use out of it. doing a bit of not-always-reliable internet research, i couldn't find anything on the topic. i did find out newly-wedded women would wear their bridal outfit on their first karva chauth (a day when women seek blessings for their husband's long life by observing a fast). i suppose i need to talk to more people to gain a better understanding. anyway, if it's true that you would wear your wedding sari on the eighth day of navratri, then i wouldn't want to have a really heavy lehenga which i can't really wear again.. or dance in for that matter.

while shopping, i did try on both saris and lehengas. i really liked the lehengas because they made me look super skinny and were generally cheaper than bridal saris. the reason i ultimately chose to go with a sari is that i found the skirts on the lehenga far too heavy.. the weight of my sari and the weight of the lehenga felt the same when folded in a package; however when wearing a sari, i found the weight to be more evenly distributed making it more comfortable to wear over the course of several hours.

a bridal sari should be one unstitched piece of fabric

one of the trends i found shopping was the choli sari style, which is basically two different saris cut and stitched together. this style is to give the bottom pleats a different look from the part that wraps over your shoulder and across your front. it's a really nice style that creates a visual interest without making the embroidery look too busy.

during my trip to india, one of my mum's cousins told me that i'm supposed to wear a single unstitched sari for the wedding; not a two saris that have been stitched together. it was explained to me that back in the day, the poor would typically take scraps of fabric and stitch them together to make a sari to wear. on auspicious occasions, days of celebration, you shouldn't wear scraps - especially on your wedding day. i suppose it shows a sign of wealth as well.

i did end up buying an unstitched piece of fabric, rather than a choli sari. like i said, the choli saris had lovely contrasts, but the specific type of embroidery i was looking for was mostly found on saris that were unstitched. good for me i guess!

a bride should not wear gold on their wedding day
last year one of my cousins told me that brides aren't supposed to wear real gold on their wedding day, their jewellery is supposed to be fake. i wasn't given an explanation as to why .. and i've also been told otherwise - it's alright to wear gold on your wedding day. kind of makes me wonder though.. how long has fake indian jewellery existed? was fake jewellery available when our grandparents were our age? actually, i should say teenagers, because in most cases our grandparents were already married and had multiple children when they were our age. if fake jewellery is a fashion trend that was made avaiable in the last 50 or so years, then this point doesn't really seem valid.

i ended up buying fake jewellery to wear at the wedding.. prices for real gold is just ridiculously too expensive right now!

this is really all the advice i've been given to date in regards to my bridal gear. i seemed to follow the do's to the tee, more so out of preference than following traditions. what can i say? i guess i'm a traditionalist kind of girl.. kiwi's certainly in trouble.