Pretty, confident and enthusiastic, bride Raghavi was sure what she wanted and to that end took care to etch every aspect of her wedding albeit in a relaxed manner. Here's her story!
I did my college in PSG CAS, Coimbatore and went to Pune to do my post graduation in Finance. Once I graduated, I came back to join my dad's business. It was a typical arranged marriage where I met him in a temple for the first time and then we spoke and took time to get to know each other. We decided to go ahead and here we are married now. Once it got fixed, time just flew and everything looks like magic.
My husband is from Bavani but brought up in Chennai and is into export of granites to European countries. He is a perfect businessman. Our engagement was fixed in a month. When the proposal came, our families liked each other so much that they wanted us to meet and see how things work out. When we met, oh my God, I fell in love with his family first and then him! They are so sweet. All the other customs happened so quickly.
We met on 24th October and our engagement was fixed on 9th December. We didn't have enough time to plan our engagement and whatever flaws happened during the engagement, we made sure nothing repeated during the wedding. After the engagement, I started planning everything for our wedding right from the costumes to the jewellery, to the hair accessories and even the minute details. I was very sure that I wanted to get some particular dress from the north especially for the Sangeeth and Reception. We made a couple of trips to Delhi to get my Sangeeth and Reception outfits. My Reception outfit was from a Delhi based designer called Sanjeev and my Sangeeth dress was from Ensemble, Delhi and the accessories are from Bling Affair, Mumbai.
After that, we did our Kancheepuram shopping. As usual, we went to Prakash silks and Babu Sah. These two were regular saree shops we visited and we ended up buying lots of sarees for everyone. I was very particular about the colour red for my wedding saree because I felt red is the only colour that gives the perfect bridal feel. Even before the groom was decided, I decided my wedding saree to be red!! For the accessories I started preparing from December and whatever I need to order online, I was done by December. I was very particular about the jewellery I wanted to wear. My head accessories for the muhurtham was completely taken care by my makeup artist Bronzer Viji. She customised them for me. My groom left everything to my choice and I just showed the final output and he was happy. I made him dance for the first time ever for the Sangeeth. I had different groups of friends from school, college and everywhere and I wanted to bring them all together for the Sangeeth. We had a lot of people performing and we had a lot of rehearsals at my home and our choreographer was very flexible and did a great job. Since I am the only girl on my family, I made all my brothers dance for me.
We booked Rakesh Prakash for the candid photography and we completely loved the pics! Aishwarya Videos also took care of photography and videography and did a good job too.
Untumble took care of Sangeeth and took care of the complete planning. Our emcee was awesome and engaged both the young and old crowd.
Everyone danced, right from my mother to my aunts. We also cut a cake during the Sangeeth. My friends came from different places and so we made sure all our events happened back to back. Our wedding and reception decor were taken care by Shiga Petals. They did an amazing job and the decor during the wedding and reception were stunning. We did a lot of sittings and finalised each and every details. My sis in law was my pillar of support and helped me with a lot of ideas.
For the wedding, we came up with the idea of flower canopy for my bridal entry and even got a flower umbrella which were really nice.
My reception jewellery was from Kirtilals. It was a special edition of Rohit Bal’s collection. All my Sangeeth accessories were ordered online. I wanted the North Indian look for the Sangeeth and got heavy chandbalis and nethi chutti to match the look. The muhurtham jewellery was from The Big Shop and Sumangali Jewellers. We had a pretty huge reception with around 10,000 people and lot of VIPs came.
Chennai Reception was at Radisson Blu and the crowd was only about 200 people. Since it was a less crowded event, I wanted to reuse my costly Sangeeth lehenga and matched them with my reception jewellery.
Catering was done by Mathampatti Rangaraj. We had a huge crowd and the caterer made sure he satisfied each and everyone. The food menu was too good. We had a separate sweet counter which had special people from Agra. The food varied from South Indian to continental etc. We were very sure that we didn’t want to waste any food and he managed everything so beautifully!
The decor by Shiga Petals was just awesome! For the reception we had a glass underneath which there were flowers!! Floral was our theme and for the reception I wanted an Indo Western decor and for the morning, I wanted it purely traditional and I had Perumal with Thaayaar as the backdrop. We had Jendu Melam and Punjabi music too!
I went for three different make up artists! For Sangeeth, Dipanwita from Bangalore and Prakruthi Anand for my Chennai Reception. Bronzer Viji did both my Wedding and Reception and I would recommend all of them!! Whatever, I forgot, my sister-in-law reminded me and my friend, whose wedding got over a month back also helped me! So the wedding planning, I must say was a stress-free one!
My parents and my in laws supported me in all my decisions and that made thi9ngs easier for me. You wouldn’t believe, my father in law was there with me in Delhi when chose my dresses.
I signed up with Kaya after I got engaged for a bridal package but I must say, more than the beauty regime, you start glowing once you are engaged! Isn’t it true? That’s what happened with me!
These days brides are very smart and they plan everything meticulously and nothing seems difficult for them!
It’s been a year since I have been following Shopzters and I feel for South Indian blogging, Shopzters is the best and it would be the first place to go for everything!
