Bride of the month - June'14!
I am sure none of us have forgotten the beautiful, chirpy and enthusiastic girl Niveditha Gujulva, who won the Styled Photo Shoot Chennai contest! Today, she is here with us to narrate the fairy tale wedding she had with her Prince Charming S.S.R. Pankaj ! Happy to feature Niveditha Gujulva, as the Bride of the month!
Everyone says a lot about love, both good and bad. I personally feel there is no such this as bad love. Love is good! Every love story is beautiful. Every love story is a masterpiece designed by God! It has been 7 months now and to add to the clichés I say Love makes life beautiful!
Normally love story involves a girl and a guy. They meet, fall in love, struggle for a bit(if applicable) get married and end of story! One would like to think that it's just up to those two but here in India, it's not just about the girl and the guy, it's about two families getting together( which is usually half the city) the poor guy has to practically propose to the entire girl's side of jing bang and the poor girl has to impress all of the boy's side of skeptics! ( here I would like to thank Chetan Bhagath for his timely Two States! - amazing )
Like I have said before, Pankaj is a man of my dreams, in fact better than the one I dreamt off! He has more class, style and most of all he has the heart! I still remember him glowing with all his poise and charm when he walked down my college corridor!
Our girlfriend boyfriend days were numbered we didn't have enough time after mom found out. We used to stay up late and do a role play to get prepared for tricky situations. We were prepared for the worst! It was quite unnerving when dad stood up did the proper 'namaste' with a wide smile and everything!
I mean they were meeting for the first time for crying out loud! Blame me for expecting some drama! (He was so surly with me for falling in love! But now!!!) - I am so grateful that they not only accepted our love but also Pankaj but come ON I need some story! What happened to the good old 'you're grounded!', 'no more mobile phone!', and all the emotional blackmail??!
Gah! Parents these days! Without further ado they proceeded to give us another shock by saying we have only 5 months if we want to get married!! What is up with this generation of parents?! Seriously! We were really really excited never the less! We never had spent a day without seeing each other,
we kept ourselves connected somehow or the other ( communication courtesy: Vodafone 10paise scheme ) there was not a moment we wanted to spend alone. Though we knew that 5 months is a ridiculously short time to prepare ourselves for marriage, we were crazy enough in love with each other (still are and will always be, touchwood) to see that as an inevitable. Marriage meant we could be together ALL THE TIME! We were willing to bring down the moon for that! It was just a wedding so.... Why not?!................, oh! Who am I kidding! Let's face it! I am girl and I have THE WEDDING in my dream list already!!! It is not JUST a wedding! When I first told him about all the ideas I had in mind, he freaked out! (he acted otherwise)
I always dreamt of either a beach wedding or a red carpet evening and a traditional South Indian muhurtham with no formalities missed!4
I am a girl with big dreams, many big dreams and this wedding is the biggest of all! I consider Pankaj a gift from the heavens! He has literally turned my world upside down! Till I met him I used wonder about how to get through every day but now, I am seeing all my dreams come true one by one, call me lucky but Pankaj made this wedding better than I imagined! He always goes a step more than what I expect. I wanted everything to be customised! Right from our wedding invitation to the carpet at the marriage hall!
First we pondered over. A colour scheme for the wedding. He wanted it to be royal! All grad colours! So we decided red, white and gold! Our entire wedding revolved around a royal wedding!
For the invites I had a photo invitation in mind. We started by designing our own invite (have attached pictures) we made our own seal and sealed every invite by hand! It came out beautifully! We printed the cards at Chennai Xerox and the black folder and envelope at Marvel cards. Thanks to my photoshop expert fiancé, he designed the entire invite from scratch! Since it was a photo card we had to shoot exclusively. Konica was our choice(cos it's the nearest!) and they did a great job!
The only day we were allowed to play around with different attires was our reception... Given a choice I would have gotten married in a beautiful lehenga.... But finally decided on a red satin dress with a tiara for me and a full white tux with a red satin tie for him! Dress courtesy: Kaajl, T. Nagar for me P N Rao, TTK road for him
Kaajl is completely Indian and I had no time to look for gowns in Chennai! But they had the most amazing collection of sarees... I picked one and I drew out the design for the tailor and voila! Made a perfect princess dress!
PN Rao was a professional place! They did an amazing job with the full white linen suit that we wanted.
Shopping was a major havoc in both the families which have a majority of girls! Sarees, dresses, matching accessories, shoes and slippers and hair clips and whatnot!
Most of the accessories for the wedding was gold so we tried a lot of places but the designs in Tanishq stood out! We absolutely loved the collection there and their service was excellent! Other non golds were from Kushals and Saravana Stores(don't judge me, it's actually pretty awesome!)
The wedding took place according to the Thevar custom(Pankaj's family) it is a simple wedding without much drama... So I needed only two sarees. My Muhurtham saree is from Nalli 100. An excellent place for silk! His entire family had taken me to select the saree, the THE saree... We tried on quite a few but Pankaj liked the pink one that I also had my eyes for. So we settled on that one. The one I have to be in before they give my muhurtham saree has to be from my parents. We picked that out from Rangachari (my dad's own shop ;P) he made a special order exclusively for my wedding and I got the best out of the lot! I picked a beautiful traditional green and maroon and looked amazing on the pictures!
PICTURES!!!! That reminds me, we got the BESTEST of the best photographers we could have!! @aa-photography# and @aaron-obed# photography!!!!! Ashok Anna and Aaron buddy are two awesome people and fantastic photographers we got know! Both have them worked their guts out to get the best pictures for us! Ashok Anna had already promised to do his best and give his full for our wedding!( he is awesome just the way he is! We couldn't imagine what he meant by his best!) he did our pre wedding shoots as well and the photos so far we have seen of the wedding are UNBELIEVABLE!! He is incredible as a photographer and much more incredible as a person! He is the most creative and a very hardworking person I have ever seen! His work has life and it will make you feel the moment he has captured (Please do visit his page to see what I am talking about!) Anna is simply the best (but he will never like he is one)
Aaron buddy is totally another! You will never know what he has in mind, but when he gives you his photos it will be something you never imagined! He is a strict officer while he works but it all pays off when you see the result! (Visit his page too to see what I mean!)Looks was another thing we had to pay attention to... Though there has been advancements in the field of cosmetics but I am absolutely terrified to give my face to anybody! I have seen enough disasters! So I handled the make up for both the occasions and for the hiair and saree draping, I contacted Naturals as they had a branch very nearby.
They did a pretty decent job! For him it was majorly hair do, so naturals arranged for a hairstylist.
Wedding is an occasion that happens once and lasts a lifetime! I had a dream wedding and my beloved husband made it all come true for me! (And he says that it's the same for him) It was a perfect wedding, everything and everyone came together and made this way better than what we both expected! It was just magical the way it all fell in place!
The wedding hall was already pretty awesome but our decorator, Mr. Suresh sir of Makali Decors designed and decorated the place and calling it excellent is a way too much of an understatement! We are still the new bride and groom! Honeymoon is the next best thing that is round the corner! Everyone is excited for us! We started planning for our honeymoon almost 2 months before the wedding!! (I know! But visa and other formalities made it kind of a necessity) we decided to go to two places one with a lot of activity and travel and the other with lesser activity and a lot of private time(hee hee :-P) so were are going to Singapore - that's the only place we planned together! He is surprising me with the second one! I have absolutely no clue where he is taking me!!! I am sooper kicked!
We were so apprehensive to get married because it had been only 2 months since we met and only 5 months time was given to us to relish the unmarried, unengaged state! But now our wedding is the best thing that happened to us!! We are absolutely psyched about waking up with each other and it just feels so complete when we have each other round the clock with no curfews and any moment spoilers! We have begun to write our fairy tale together!
I would like to say one last thing... I hope, wish and pray that every love marriage happens like ours! If I had a dream, this was way beyond that! P.S. : We are blessed with the greatest parents in the whole wide world and we feel too lucky to have had such amazing team working to make our dream come true! We also would like to thank Shopzters to have given this amazing opportunity to share this with all of you!
