7 first steps: Planning an Indian wedding

I had never had Pinterest Board of preplanned dreams for this day 3 - 5 days of festivities, and (unsurprisingly) neither had Minesh. 

We weren't exactly ready to rumble when we finally decided to start planning, but we had already agreed on certain fundamental decisions before getting engaged. 

This included:

- What we wanted from marriage

- What we wanted the wedding to be like (fun and reflective of our personalities)

- What our budget for the wedding was

- How we were going to pay for it

- Where we wanted to get married (somewhere intimate and meaningful for both of us)

- How many events we wanted to have

However, some of those 'definites' started to blur around the edges with each new question and added opinion / option that came with every congratulatory phone call.

After a couple of months of celebrating (no planning or decision making at all, just eating, drinking, going out and watching movies), we sat back down to talk about what we both originally wanted.

In my opinion, this was the best thing we did.

We  went back over our ultimate wedding wishlists with each other; a list of 5 or so things that we didn't really want to compromise on. I wrote mine down, because that's what I do. Min told me his verbally, because that's what he does. They were actually quite similar because they kind of summarised all of those conversations we'd had beforehand.

A couple of our friends said that they wished they'd written down and stuck to their original wishlists too, so here goes the rest of this post.

7 steps (around the fire):

1. Write and share your wishlists. Save it in your phones so you can keep going back to it.

Have fun being engaged. Don't start planning the wedding straight away. Make the most of being wined and dined and celebrating going public ;-) ;-) We did this for about 4 and a half months, I kid you not.  

2. Sit with your families and confirm the bare minimum number of events required ("required" because I don't only mean the ones you want, but also those extra couple of Poojas that you might need for religious reasons, or that registry you need for legal reasons...)

If you want less events, ask what you can combine! You'd be surprised what a little innovation can create. If someone says no, ask why not. If there isn’t a valid reason, be bold and go for it.

3. Create a home drawn calendar for your ideal month / ideal date and arrange the events around this, together with any other family events / holidays / weddings you also need to take into consideration. I say home drawn, just to allow you to keep moving things around until it fits - like trial and error.

4. Work out locations (e.g. pros and cons of going abroad).

I think most people work out the number of people on their invite list, then look for a venue big enough to accommodate. We knew we wanted to have an intimate backyard wedding, but Minesh also spent a good amount of time contacting large venues in the U.K. and getting quotes, as a alternative. (Min did a LOT of the wedding admin and running around, which I am really grateful for.)

4b. Book your Maharaj (including music) and suppliers for decor, food, banqueting and music. 

I found it helpful to get and compare three quotes (no more) for each and then book them based on price & quality before overthinking the decision too much. A list of our suppliers is here.

5. Find and stick to an invite rule. We had a 50/50 invite ratio to match our split cost - a lot of couples we know had 60/40 split between brides and grooms side family.

6. Confirm venues and timings of all events. Write a list of who you are inviting to each function (number per household) and calculate a total required per event. Get invites designed and then printed. 

Tip 1: a spreadsheet was helpful for this. Column names: Household name, expected number of Yeses, number invited to event 1, number invited to event 2 etc, RSVP'ed yes to event 1, RSVP'ed yes to event 2 etc, address (for invite label), names of those in the household (for writing on the invites), grouping (e.g. Maternal side, paternal side, friends, dad's friends, mum's friends etc).

Tip 2: Print 100 more of each invite page for a) errors and b) b list (lol).

Tip 3: Print one for God, if you do this as part of your kankotri writing ceremony

Tip 4: Confirm if you will be including married males in their parents invites, but sending married females invites their own invite (old tradition representing the female having actually moved out into a new family).

7. Have fun!

Then the next steps were all super fun:

Kankotri writing with the families, family dinners where we went through itineraries and logistics for each event, food tastings and finalising prices and timings with each supplier, asking our #1s to be part of our ceremonies, delegating responsibilities at each event to our experienced siblings/cousins, and finishing clothing decisions for events / family members. AND OF COURSE MY HEN PARTY!

I haven't said too much about my Mandvo and Pithi because my Mum, Dad and Aunts did all the organisation for that <3

Hope this helps!!

Some extra random tips:

1. Sound engineers are really more important than I realised. I recommend getting a tried and tested sound engineer for a Garba / Sangeet. Ensure that you really trust them to ensure smooth set up early and good quality throughout the night.

2. If you put up material draping delegate someone to check the hems to ensure it's all even and not fraying.

3. Suppliers can sometimes set up most things days before the actual wedding - I found this really helpful so that we weren't rushing around at 6am on the day checking that enough chairs had arrived.

4. If anyone tells you something absolutely cannot be done, move away from them. You don't need that kind of negativity in your life ;-).

5. We used Sairah's steamer to get out creases on chair covers the night before the wedding. It was really fun because my friends and family were doing it together and it was really ridiculous but also funny. The point is, think about investing in a steamer if you have décor that can be creased, or for your outfits!

Chillin'

Priya

xxx