Hey Everyone!
Thank you for all the love on the last blog post about my announcement about my marriage and move! In response to that, i’m going to kick-off the wedding series posts with the best place to start….from the beginning!
I don’t want these posts to be massively long, so let’s just get right into it!
How we met: This is a very very long story, and could be many blog posts of it’s own, but i’ll keep it simple. Our parents have known each other through the mutual community for like the past 15 years, we however did not meet officially until 2011, we went to the same college for undergrad and my now-husband (who we will call R moving forward, because that’s his first initial and i prefer anonymity) also interned in my dad’s office for a year or so. SO between the combination of these things, we met, we became friends, then we became more than friends about a year and a half in, and maintained our relationship through college and post college while he finished grad school for 4 years + long distance. This all could be another post – so if you really want to know about long distance relationships + how to make it work; let me know.
How did we get married: So I told our parents about ‘us’ back in 2014, once i finished my undergrad, because i felt that was the right time to tell them. It wasn’t easy, but i felt like a huge weight was lifted off of my shoulders once i told them. So in summer 2016 our parents met ‘officially’ for the first time in regards to us, and we had a baat-pakki/understanding between our parents/families, that when the time comes; we will get engaged and married. He was only half way through his graduate program at this point, in VA, and i was still living and working at home in NJ, so there was no way for us to financially support ourselves and be independent/he was still working towards the career he has now, so everything had to be done in bits and pieces.
Fast forward to 2017, things progressed and progressed, and we decided around August or September that by the end of 2017, we would do an official engagement ceremony. So, on 12/1/17 we got engaged alhumd 🙂 I didn’t share any of this because i really wanted to keep it private, plus the amount of evil-eye is unreal. We had a nice engagement party with our families and close friends, I got my beautiful engagement ring and we did the traditional desi-engagement rasams. Since i have my engagement pics, i can actually share some here of the details!
I loved my outfit for this event, it was a tea pink and ferozi blue combo. I loved all of my wedding related events, but this one was the one that kicked it off!
So yes, we got engaged in December. Then if you guys remember, i visited Pakistan from end of Dec-Jan for my cousins wedding, but not only that also to do my own wedding shopping! SO the amount of stress that trip was, but equally as fulfilling, i’ll never forget it! Before going on this Pakistan trip, our parents met once again to decide on the wedding date. Originally, we had thought to stay engaged 1 full year and get married in Dec of 2018. However, with the unpredictable snow/weather + the Islamic month during December does not have any auspicious days in it really, it was decided that Labor Day Weekend of 2018 would be our wedding week-end for multiple reasons. So our official engagement period was an exact 9 months long before marriage. Months went on, R went on to graduate from his graduate program in May alhumd, and i finished my MBA in May as well. Ramadan came and went, and R made the move to good ol’ Michigan in Mid-June and began working in July.
How the planning process went: Let me just preface this by saying this to all future-brides, and any current bride-to-be who may be getting married soon: whatever you’re stressing out about right now, DON’T.
Wedding-planning process is extremely tiresome and stressful. If you’re desi, then for the girls side it’s even more stressful, tiring and crazy. Once we got the clothes ordered in Pakistan, we came back here and spent weeks venue-hopping before finalizing our location for the wedding. Which was my favorite venue out of all of my wedding event days, alhumd! Then, we had to finalize venues for the smaller events too, and work on getting a decorator, caterer, menus, makeup/hair artists, henna artists, and DJ for the events.
I definitely stressed over some of the small details that do not require much thought. In the end, as long as everyone of your vendors delivers to their promise- you are fine. No wedding, especially desi weddings, go 100% to plan. For someone like me, whose pretty type A, that was just difficult to be OK with. But the best tips i can give regarding how to stay sane during the planning process would be:
- Buy a notebook or diary or something to write everything down in: like venue names/capacity/availabilities for your event dates/setting up meetings with everyone etc.
- Keep track of decorators – shop around and then finalize on one. If you have multiple events, try to use the same decor person for all- they will give you a better overall price and will be willing to throw in extras.
- Decide on menus and do taste tests asap. This was a pretty fun process, and overall i’m 100% happy with the food of all of my events, the taste was divine! And honestly, if there is one place to worry about – it would be food. Because your guests (half of them at least) Are there just for the food and the socializing, so if the food is good – your guests will remember.
- Follow up, follow up, follow up. Stay on TOP of all of your vendors – follow up 1x a month leading up to the wedding, and every week when you’re maybe a month before the wedding. They all have million of events going on and need to be reminded of dates, deadlines, and of course any details you have.
There’s plenty more that could be said, but these would be the ways to begin at least to keep your head on straight.
I think that will be all for this post. It’s getting lengthy!! Let me know what else you guys would like to hear or see in regards to the behind-the-scenes and planning process! Once i get through this stuff, i’ll go into each event and the details of all of it!
I’ll try to make these weekly-ish, so that way we can get through them before my wedding becomes old news 😉
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Until next time, XOX