Catchin' up

Less than two weeks for the wedding, and I’m not even half way done with distributing the wedding invitations. Those who know me would find this easy to believe because I’m a lazy bum. I’m so lethargic it’s not even funny. But I realized there are two major reasons for my laxness in this case. 

First, we put in a great deal of effort in making these personalized cards for our friends. Swati is constantly on a quest to do even regular mundane things in a little offbeat way. So obviously she we wanted to do something different with the wedding invitation for our friends. My suggestion was a vinyl record with function names and dates as the tracks behind the vinyl cover. The front would probably a photograph of us dressed as celebrities (my suggestion was Elvis and Marilyn Monroe).

 

Several such ideas were shot down before Swati chose our current design. I had almost convinced her that one good picture with some text would do just fine, and we went to Pulkit to take that one photograph. But he suggested doing a whole series of movie poster style pictures! I just knew Swati was loving the idea, and Pulkit said he would get something he could probably add to his portfolio. Now this meant dressing up and getting hundreds of pictures clicked everyday – NOT the kind of effort I’m a fan of! We would dress up and get one or two styles clicked in a day. So the whole process took about three weeks. But we did it, and it was crazy fun thanks to Pulkit and Charithra! Now, having made a card that we were thoroughly happy with, especially after having put in so much effort, I was going to go all out and distribute these cards by hand with pride…

Secondly, this gave me chance to meet up with a whole bunch of friends that I hadn’t met in very long. This has been taking me all around the city to meet friends. So I’m taking my own sweet time meeting people one by one and handing over the cards so that we could catch up (my experience with other friends who are married has told me that hanging out with friends often takes a backseat once you’re “settled”). Also, hand delivering meant getting to hear praises about the card. So whee!

 The Envelope

Inner card Front & Back

One month to go.

Seeing as how the Google spider is my only reader at this point, I'd like to talk about some of my thoughts.

I’m getting married. In less than a month. And it’s started to dawn upon me that a marriage isn’t between two people; it’s between two families – at least in India. Every occasion is marked with an exchange of gifts. Isn’t that great! Except that it’s a war of one-upmanship between the two families.

Not to mention the barrage of rib-poking and rhetoric questions. Every action, happy or dull, is an invitation to an uncomfortable question followed by constant stares. Every reaction is suddenly booby trapped with repercussions – repercussions that you didn’t think were possible hardly weeks ago.
Heck, even non-action is subject to sardonicism, so it’s not uncommon to want to implode.

Insatiable relatives aside, a wedding (specially a big fat Indian one) is a very taxing event on the primary “stakeholders”. 

The preparation that needs to be started at the earliest is that of the wedding invitees list. This most dreadfully challenging task took dad and me about one and a half months to build a list of  500 names. We got a suggestion early on to create an excel sheet with columns like Name, Address, Phone Number, Category (Friends/relatives/office), Importance (!), #of accompanying guests, Arrival Date Time (To arrange pick-up).

The second most important (but my most dreaded) task is shopping. *shudder*. It’s understandable that most women want to make a carnival out of it. For Swati, it started three or four months ago and included 10-12 day long trips to Mumbai and Jaipur - for the most expensive purchases like. And then there were the non-stop visits to shopping areas like Commercial Street and various tailors - several of which I was am still being forced to go. It’s scary how everyone is saying, “this is just practice”. I’m so scared I just pee’d a little.

There were also similar shopping trips for me! Not that great many times, but far too many times for my comfort. Why do tailors need one trial, while mothers/sisters/girlfriends need you to give at least two to three!?
BTW, here's a neat business tip - when you say you'll have your product ready for pick-up by some date, have it ready! I can't imagine multiple trips to over-crowded shopping markets carving a favorable brand image. 

Tasks remaining:

– talk to choreographer about my dance with Swati (Yes, I know. And I do not want flak on this. You can keep your taunts to yourself thankyouverymuch.)

– talk to club representative if we can access to the PA speakers for some ambiance music. It’s uncomfortable enough to be around SO MANY people all at once. I think we deserve some music running in the background at all times.

– Start distributing my personalized wedding invitations. (long story, maybe another post).