Weddingbee bios

So around three months before our wedding, which is when husband and I started pretty much everything, I asked my four dearest friends to be my bridesmaids. It was done informally, because of 1.) the lack of time I had and 2.) I’m not quite into the formal when it comes to friends. So I sent off an email explaining we have a tentative date (yes, three months prior and no date!) and asking if they’d be my BMs. I went on to explain dresses as I imagined. I wanted all my BMs to be comfortable, so I gave them the option of wearing either a saree, salwar kameez, or a traditional BM dress. The only think I asked for is that they have the same color/shade.

A couple days later, my inbox was filled with four responses that said “Yes I accept! And I want to wear a sari!” I was a bit overwhelmed with delight that all my friends were excited to take part in the traditional side of my wedding. So there I was with four bridesmaids and no maid of honor. The MOH was reserved for my sister, and even thought she was not going to be part of my wedding, I felt I could not replace her.

Let me tell you that these four friends are the BEST that anyone could ask for!

J – stood by me from day one. She was my sounding board, coming to my dress shopping or making sure things looked and sounded right. She helped organize the bridal shower as well, with Brenda. She was with me the last three nights leading up to the wedding, and staying up with me as well, making sure things were being taken care of. Without her support, I was lost.

V - with her continuing support, emotionally. I've known her for many years now (since Oakton High). We were the type of friends that despite the long gaps of communication, could pick up right where we left off and know everything about the other person.

S - provided me with great ideas and ensuring I focus on what was next on my list. She also took the responsibility for making all the escort tags by hand, one by one. With her high spirits, she fills any room with joy just by walking in to it.

B - was there making sure all was in order and I didn't forget anything. She brought many great ideas to the table and organized my bridal shower party. The dedication and focus she has always bring great results to any project.

I started with going shopping with BM J to get a feel for what the dresses (lengha/saree) looked like and the cost of it. I knew I could get something really nice for a decent price in India .. but alas we are not in India.. All I knew was I wanted a maroon or red lengha or saree, preferably maroon ( love that color).

That day I tried on many .. this is of course looking online for hours ( just like all the rest of you ). :P I liked one, but it was waaay over budget. I wasn't worried so far.

One day I went to a shop by myself .. and that's when I found THE dress .. it was you guessed it MAROON! It had emerald green and gold embroidery all over it. It was a bit heavier than I liked but it was the best option so far and affordable.

My BMs sarees were going to have to match my new colors .. so they went off in search for green sarees.. while I let this dress get a hold of my head. I had not bought it, as the lady said she was getting a shipment of new ones in a few weeks. I said I'll wait and see them, and asked if she could hold this dress for me. I was going to buy the emerald one if I didn't like any of the others.

I went to the same lady with my BMs some weeks later to get them in sarees and saw the new shipment. I saw another maroon one I liked and there was a crimson red one that I didn't even bother to try one. At this point I was set with the emerald green one.

One more trip to the shop .. this time with my FI as we wanted our attire to coordinated. He saw all the lenghas (no, I'm not superstitious).. and of course he had to like the one I didn't EVEN try on! *sigh* .. I reluctantly put it on to please him, and to my surprise I liked it better than the maroon/emerald one!!!! It was less busy and busy in a good way. It was light and less than the emerald one. Whooohooo! We bought it. :)

My heart was very content and the pictures are there to prove it! :)

The top blouse, this is the only picture of it not covered.

The skirt or lengha.

Details of my skirt.

Full lenght shot.

As you recall from my Bridesmaids post that I had four lovely BMs who were all excited to wear a saree. Now the question was which one. There are hundreds to choose from! There is a whole blog dedicated to sarees!

Actually it was this exact blog that told me what NOT to do when having BMs wear sarees. There were some bad pictures of BMs in faded/drab colors that did not look good at all together. Which is why I wanted each girl to have a different saree but in the same color.

Sari Search – Part I

Yes, the sari search was so long and complicated it has to be broken down into parts.

I did not have a dress for myself but I knew it was going to be red or maroon; and either a lengha or saree. I was a one dress girl all the way! Leaning towards a maroon (I love that color :P ) I told my girls to pick a color from the pile: Cream, Navy blue, Royal blue, or Light blue.

Here are a couple that I looked at initially.

Now, since my FI at that time was paying out of pocket for the whole entire wedding (I had a mortgage to keep up and did not make nearly as much as him) I had asked my bridesmaids to pay for their sarees. Which is why I wanted to keep a budget in mind .. that didn’t add up to more than $70-$80 per girl.

Sari Search – Part II

A few weekends later, I had found a lengha that I really, really, really liked! :) It was maroon (yay! Go me!) and it had emerald green and gold embroidery ALL over it. Now biased to a new dress, I picked a new color for my BMs.

EMERALD GREEN! :)

We all went saree shopping so that they could get a feel for what the different fabrics were like (chiffon, georgette, silk, etc.. )

After a day of saree shopping we took to the online stores (more in budget). And of course, there were so many options I had to come up with a "saree palette" to compare them all. The task for each girl.. pick one shade they liked best (majority wins) .. easy right? WRONG! :-/

Sari Search – Part III

I let a few more weeks go by (timing was getting tight at this point .. as these sarees needed 30 days to be sewed and shipped + shipping time from India).

** Enter a excited and stressed bride.

Excited as I had found my dress! Yay!! It was different from the dress I liked before, red with gold embroidery all over. Not maroon but crimson red ..

So as you can imagine, crimson red and emerald green .. looks a LOT like Christmas. And I did not really like the idea of being a Christmas tree at my wedding. :P

Solution: A new color! But which one? Cream, red, and green were crossed off (cream because my groom would be wearing cream and red sherwani.)

We debated between black and yellow for a while (two colors easier to match shades with) with .. no agreements. Later I ruled out black later realizing how gloomy it would look.

One more week went by, we met up again and this time, I said, pick one for  all. We sat around a round Panera Bread table and .. went through several pictures. If the majority liked it, the saree stayed in the pile. We went through this until there were three left. Then I told each to write on a piece of paper, the order of which saree they’d pick, majority won. And in the end we all were very happy with the decision! :)

Source: All sarees see here were taken from www.utsavsarees.com

Let me tell you about my invitations. Well we were really blessed to have a friend of Mr. Sonipapdi who owned a printing business. He and his wife wanted to help us with our invites.

So the first step was to get out the mad photoshop skillz I had acquired over the time. :) I whipped up some designs for my future husband at that time to look at. With his approval I sent it over to Mr. S's friend's wife, we'll call her K. So K helped me pick out some images that would work better (higher resolution). She sent me some samples of the design I created as well as ones she came up with and the matching envelopes.

I had a few changes to the samples and off they went to the printing press. I want to give a huge shout out to them because not only did they not charge us for a single penny for the invites but also hand delivered them since they were coming in town prior to the wedding anyways. We tried paying them in other ways but they were too slick for us. I was very grateful for this gift! Let me how they looked when I got them! (the color is a bit off .. it really is green)

Once they were in my hands I wanted to spice them up. Also I decided against an inner an outer envelope so I needed another way to list the invitees. In came ribbons to do the job of a belly band. I had three separate papers to bind together anyways and what better way to do it than with ribbons right? I bought a wide green band to match with the invite. It was wide so I could do my writing directly on them. I also bought a thin purple ribbon to add as a bow. (green and purple were my colors)

First I tried writing with fabric marker. That didn’t work because of the tip ruining the ribbon and the ink spreading more than I’d like. So I went back to the craft store and got some fabric paint (gold glitter) :D That worked like a charm! See the final product (it was still wet when I took this picture).

Next was to complete all 180 some invitations that needed to be sent out asap because I was already late in sending them.. oops. Here’s proof of my invite making factory.

Next was the envelopes. I tried calligraphy .. had never done it and it didn’t look good. Then I tried printing labels with different fonts. I didn’t like any of them .. as I was trying to find another method I almost gave up and decided to do the labels. But I gave one more try, my own handwriting. No it wasn’t calligraphy but it was pretty cursive. I got some gold pens and started writing. I loved the results!

For the return address however I decided to go ahead with the labels so that it was quicker. But I wanted to add a wax seal. Here are the results of that.

All in all, I was very happy with the results and received numerous compliments on my handwriting. So lesson of the day, your talents are better than any computer can produce! :)