Ya I know it's been a millenium since my last post. You see, right now I am part of a scientific experiment at my job where they keep loading me with more work and every two hours they check if they have managed to kill me yet. And every time, I go "Surpriiiise, I am still alive!!"
So in order to keep my sanity, I thought I should go back to blogging. So, here goes....
(Continued from Part 1 and Part 2.)
Long story short, at some point everyone involved agreed that the wedding was going to happen. (I will get to the whole reason-arrange-marriage thing at the end.) By this time, I thought the "difficult" part was mostly over. Everyone was on board, after all. If this were a cartoon , this is the point where the devil would be lurking in the corner saying "You wish" and grinning evilly.
Yes. Wedding prep.
I knew that entire wars have been fought over wedding details and the carcasses were enough to send Asoka to Buddhism, so I thought I shouldn't be too involved. In fact, I started out with the naive idea that I didn't care too much about this stuff and I would not worry about making the choices. (After all, I got to make the biggest choice aka the groom) And things would have gone on fine......
But once I saw a sample invitation that came in dirty violet with golden tassles and yellow-green text, I realized I did care about this stuff on some level. I did want the pretty invitations and beautiful text- an invitation that was elegant, minimalistic and somehow had a tinge of wedding-grandness at the same time. To quote Meryl Streep....
Turned out I was.
After a few whatsapp and gmail threads with loads of pictures, I realized one thing- the perfect ones were either too expensive or just too high maintenance. The ones that appeared to be in my league were either "good-but-not-my-type", "meh" or "really terrible, I cannot believe I am even considering this. I must be getting desperate". In the end, I just realized you have gotta pick one anyway and hope that it would work out in the long run.
Yes, yes. I am still talking about the invitations. Not. The. Groom.
Anyway, after that fire was put out came the invitation text. I am sure I drove the printing guy crazy with my grammar nazi-ness by having 4 reprints of the prototype. In my defense, I could obviously not have my name spelled "suchira" (with the 's' in lowercase') or Irvine spelled "Inwine". Seriously!
Then came the menus. As a food lover, I thought I should have a say in this even though everyone insisted I wouldn't be getting to eat much of it.
So I was trying really hard to include items that different sections of guests would appreciate (or at least to serve the principle that nobody should go home hungry!) But then our original caterer bailed out because our mandap wala said "No buffet" (I know, what is up with THAT!?! That too in a place with a characteristically Western name - Salem.) So we had to settle for a South Indian caterer who promised to make Naans and some paneer thing (I forget what), but from the minute I saw his menu written in Tamil, I knew he was one of the types to spell Gobhi as Gopi and my expectations spiralled down.
I still had to ensure there was at least a mix of dishes in the menu and that the chef didn't put anything that was technically correct but practically incriminating like fake meat. Not that that helped. On D-Day most of his dishes reminded me of hostel food anyway.
Of course I had to repeat the charade again for 2 more receptions- and also ensure that they didn't all look the same. If someone is thinking I should have written a script for generating menus - I agree. I don't know why it didn't occur to me then.
You know just writing this out is tiring. And that's not even midway. We still had the theme and decorations, clothes and all that other stuff to go..
(To be contd.)
---
Oh, the reason for not liking arranged marriage. I am thinking I will make it one of those things like the face of this lady:
We'll keep mentioning it, but probably never reveal it.. :D
So, for now, That's all folks!
So in order to keep my sanity, I thought I should go back to blogging. So, here goes....
(Continued from Part 1 and Part 2.)
Long story short, at some point everyone involved agreed that the wedding was going to happen. (I will get to the whole reason-arrange-marriage thing at the end.) By this time, I thought the "difficult" part was mostly over. Everyone was on board, after all. If this were a cartoon , this is the point where the devil would be lurking in the corner saying "You wish" and grinning evilly.
Yes. Wedding prep.
I knew that entire wars have been fought over wedding details and the carcasses were enough to send Asoka to Buddhism, so I thought I shouldn't be too involved. In fact, I started out with the naive idea that I didn't care too much about this stuff and I would not worry about making the choices. (After all, I got to make the biggest choice aka the groom) And things would have gone on fine......
But once I saw a sample invitation that came in dirty violet with golden tassles and yellow-green text, I realized I did care about this stuff on some level. I did want the pretty invitations and beautiful text- an invitation that was elegant, minimalistic and somehow had a tinge of wedding-grandness at the same time. To quote Meryl Streep....
Turned out I was.
After a few whatsapp and gmail threads with loads of pictures, I realized one thing- the perfect ones were either too expensive or just too high maintenance. The ones that appeared to be in my league were either "good-but-not-my-type", "meh" or "really terrible, I cannot believe I am even considering this. I must be getting desperate". In the end, I just realized you have gotta pick one anyway and hope that it would work out in the long run.
Yes, yes. I am still talking about the invitations. Not. The. Groom.
Anyway, after that fire was put out came the invitation text. I am sure I drove the printing guy crazy with my grammar nazi-ness by having 4 reprints of the prototype. In my defense, I could obviously not have my name spelled "suchira" (with the 's' in lowercase') or Irvine spelled "Inwine". Seriously!
Then came the menus. As a food lover, I thought I should have a say in this even though everyone insisted I wouldn't be getting to eat much of it.
So I was trying really hard to include items that different sections of guests would appreciate (or at least to serve the principle that nobody should go home hungry!) But then our original caterer bailed out because our mandap wala said "No buffet" (I know, what is up with THAT!?! That too in a place with a characteristically Western name - Salem.) So we had to settle for a South Indian caterer who promised to make Naans and some paneer thing (I forget what), but from the minute I saw his menu written in Tamil, I knew he was one of the types to spell Gobhi as Gopi and my expectations spiralled down.
I still had to ensure there was at least a mix of dishes in the menu and that the chef didn't put anything that was technically correct but practically incriminating like fake meat. Not that that helped. On D-Day most of his dishes reminded me of hostel food anyway.
Of course I had to repeat the charade again for 2 more receptions- and also ensure that they didn't all look the same. If someone is thinking I should have written a script for generating menus - I agree. I don't know why it didn't occur to me then.
You know just writing this out is tiring. And that's not even midway. We still had the theme and decorations, clothes and all that other stuff to go..
(To be contd.)
---
Oh, the reason for not liking arranged marriage. I am thinking I will make it one of those things like the face of this lady:
We'll keep mentioning it, but probably never reveal it.. :D
So, for now, That's all folks!
