Back after a long time

Hey all! I’m back after more than 6 months. Wasn’t doing anything wedding related so didn’t have anything to post. Time is totally taken up by new flat, renovation, etc.

The theme for our new home is Balinese Resort. Trying to turn our home into a resort so that we don’t have to go on holidays. :p  It’s so scary how expensive it is to do even minimal renovation. But it makes more sense to do the renovation before we move in rather than to try to do it in bits and pieces when we are living there (can’t imagine the dust and dirt). So we have to fork out the cash anyhow!

Oh, the honeymoon has now been confirmed for Turkey, after many many changes. Hotels decided upon already. Just waiting for the NATAS travel fair in feb/march next year to do the booking. Have to postpone honeymoon to July due to work commitments, but I guess it’s good to have time to settle into the new place before jetting off.

Gorgeous Saree

I think this saree is so gorgeous, unique and most of all, wacky like me! I want to get it for my nalangu but my mum says it looks crappy. 😦

What do you all think?

Favours!

Yipee! The favours are settled as well. Cute colourful little containers decorated with mirrorwork and sparkles – can be used as kungkumam (sindoor) holders or jewelry boxes. Incidentally, also Rajasthani (sudden obsession with stuff from there). MIL has a contact who can get it for a very affordable unit price direct from manufacturer, so it’s all good! 😀

Rajasthani Lacquer Bangles!

Oh my god I found the bangles I was thinking of!!

Except now I have to find them somewhere that I can buy them from.

New Honeymoon Itinerary: Best of both worlds! :D

4 nights in Cairns – Snorkelling at Low Isles (Great Barrier Reef), Aborigine Cultural Park, Shopping
4 nights in Sydney – Jetcruiser, Skywalk at Sydney Tower, Luna Park (old style amusement park), Ferndale Wildlife Park, Opera House, Shopping
6 nights in Bali – Kintamani, Tanah Lot, Singaraja, Balinese Dance, Mengwi Temple, Massages, Shopping

Yay! 😀

2nd Booking done!

The 2nd major booking has been done for the wedding! We’ve already booked the temple hall (Arasakesari Temple). Now we’ve booked the bridal package. We booked it with R. Although the service appears to be less personalized and warm compared to M, I felt that R was alot more professional and definitely didnt try to sweet talk me or hardsell. Plus their package had a coffeetable book style photo album instead of the normal one. I thought that was a nice thing to have, along with a cd of all the shots. R’s package cost $3000 and includes the following:

• Makeup and hair
• Accessories
• 2 x saree tying
• Henna (up to wrist & ankle)
• Garlands and Chendus
• Flowers for the hair including rakodi
• Bridal Car with driver and decor
• Photography (Unlimited shots since it’s digital) – about 8 hours of coverage
• Videography – about 8 hours of coverage

Not bad at all I think. And with everything being included, it’s definitely less of a headache. Now, I’m left with these:

1) Wedding Hall Decor
2) Invitations
3) Favours (artistic drawing of Radha-Krishna in a borderless glass frame)
4) Food
5) Sarees & Jewellery
6) Bangles for bangle ceremony (I am determined to find non-tacky, non-glass, non-glittery bangles which i will actually want to wear again on normal days)

That’s it! Yay! 😀

Huh?

As of now, I have 3 different itineraries for Honeymoon Australia, 2 different itineraries for Honeymoon Europe and 2 Free-and-Easy plans for Bali and Thailand.

On one hand, I feel like a honeymoon should be different and unique and special, which means the Australia and Europe options are more logical. On the other hand, I really want a honeymoon that is full of pampering, luxury and good food, which makes Bali and Thailand the better options.

Luxury on a budget is not something you can get in Australia and especially not Europe. I cannot stand the thought of staying in B&B’s and self-catering apartments just to make the budget work. That’s just not my idea of a honeymoon. Sure, once you’re out of the apartment, everything is beautiful. But you can’t sleep on the street, can you?

The obvious choice to me is Bali or Thailand, simply because it makes me happy just thinking about the days of waking up in a beautiful private villa, having daily massages, swimming in a private pool and being waited on hand and foot.

But I keep getting put off by the thought of all the comments I’m bound to get when I tell people that my honeymoon is going to be in Bali or Thailand. “That’s so not special!”, “It’s so near, you can go there anytime!” and “People make weekend trips there, how can it be a proper honeymoon?” are just some of the dreaded comments.

I feel like I’m stuck between planning an impressive honeymoon and a satisfying one…

Valentine’s Day 2009 – A Story of Tragedy

No, the day itself wasn’t a tragedy. My Valentine’s Day 2009 was spent at a drama theatre applying makeup for the cast of a drama before watching the drama, which was of the genre of tragedy. The story was an excerpt from the Karnabharam, and focused on a few pivotal events in the life of Karna.

He was an illegimate child born of a virgin, descended from the Sun God. And following the usual Indian melodrama, he was semi-adopted into a clan of evil guys, and he ended up supporting them in an epic war (why is it never a small scuffle? How come everyone goes to war to settle ego problems?) against his half-brothers. And his virgin mother (who abandoned him by the way) asks him not to harm his brothers, effectively sentencing him to death since he was going to fight a war, not have a boardroom meeting. He dies. The End.

I felt that the drama had too much of a sober tone. Yes it’s a tragedy, but it also has alot of action in terms of face-offs and wars. I think if two extra scenes had been included, the drama would have achieved its aim of bringing across the valour of Karna.

1. The scene where Karna challenges Arjuna and is shamed by the royal advisors that a man of questionable birth cannot challenge on of royal birth. It would have shown the circumstances in which Duryodhana saved the face of Karna, a complete stranger. It would have shown that Duryodhana was doing this in order to embarass the Pandavas, but Karna viewed it as a selfless action, prompting him to devote his loyalty to Duryodhana.

2. The scene during the war where Arjuna and Karna fight and Karna is dying on the battlefield. It would have made the death of Karna more poignant rather than just showing him going to war and then being dead on the battlefield in the next scene.

I also felt that the voice modulation and enunciation of the actors could have been more polished. Often, the dialogues were spoken with weird modulations that ended up “swallowing” the words and leaving the audience in doubt as to what was actually said.

However, it was definitely a good attempt for their first out-of-school production, given the serious lack of manpower faced by the team. Hopefully next year’s production will draw more people to be part of the cast and crew and give ICS a chance to work with the necessary manpower.

Indian Bridal Packages

Recently, I did my rounds of the top few Indian beauty parlours to find out the going rate for their basic bridal packages. And boy was I shocked. Complete rip-offs. Here are some of the prices for a package with makeup, hairdo, use of basic accessories and saree-tying:

Entrepreneur Value-add Bigshot Hooha R – $500
Direct Rival with Freaky Namecard S – $450
80’s Old is Still Gold M – $450

If you want the latest accessories, there is an additional charge. You need to pay seperately for a trial too, anywhere from $50 to $80.

So all in all, if you want a proper package inclusive of trial, it’s going to cost between $490 to $580. Unbelievable. That’s 5% of my entire wedding budget. It’s going to cost me more than my wedding saree to do my makeup and hair.

These people KNOW you need someone who can tie a saree quickly in a cramped area, and they KNOW your usual candidates for the job will be busy running around carrying platters and cajoling relatives. With this knowledge, they happily charge a rate that works out to about $100 an hour (if they are with you from 5am to 10am or 4pm to 9pm). That makes them better paid than most upper management!

This is one of those things that make me wish it was physically possible to take my head off my shoulders and put it down on a table and do my own hair. I can do everyone’s, but I can’t do my own perfectly without being able to see the back of my head can I??? Though not for a lack of trying. I’m still attempting to devise a way to perfect it. I’ll let you know when I’m done.

Just Because.

There’s no lack of talk about the nightmares of a bride-to-be. I thought it might be interesting to write all my experiences down, just to have a laugh when I’m on the other side. Also to have a place to gripe about it all when I’m going through it.