She married the love of her life! She got herself the best vendors and they gave her the best memories she could never forget! And today... She's here to share her wedding story with us! Meet Keerthana, the chirpy bride who had more than a year to plan her wedding!
Hello brides-to-be...I know its quite the tensed times when all the pressure to look exceptionally well haunts your dreams. It is of course super stressful for the bride to be, however the groom simply spends a day shopping for his pants and shoes and runs off partying his last days of bachelor life. (I wish it was that easy for us)...haha... :) Anyway so here I am completing my dream wedding by writing about it to all Shopzters brides.Thank you Shopzters! I am simply overwhelmed!!
Ashwin and I were in a relationship for 5 years when our parents found out that we were hanging out too much to let the news go beyond the first family circle ..Lol..Me being a medico wanted time to finish my MBBS while my hubby wanted to gain experience in his real estate company but things definitely go out of hand when the news gets to our parents.
They decided that we had to get married soon. (Thanks to our super cool parents ..love you maa paa :*).. and then the wedding date was fixed - Nov 9, 2014. I had almost one year and two months to plan my big day. We even celebrated our minus one wedding anniversary on Nov 9 2013..lol... :D that's how much time I had to plan!
The very first thing every bride wants is the perfect bridesmaid (oh..forget the groom!..you will definitely not have time for him with all the shopping). Me being the perfect Bridezilla required a lot of bridesmaids! My elder sister Kalai, cousin Sam and Sow and even my sweet sister in law was there in the list. Thanks to all of them for putting up with this bridezilla..Hugs! :*Our Wedding was scheduled to happen at Mayor Ramanadhan chettiar centre, Santhome. It was definitely my dream mandapam and I couldn't ask for more. The next thing on the list is to book the best make up artist who can bring the bridal glow even if u don't already have one. I am proud that the best artist in town was there for my rescue. Make up Ibrahim did the makeup for my engagement on June 16, 2014 and I knew right away that he was the perfect one for that perfect look on my big day.
Hairstylist Vijayragavan was excellent and professional in every hairdo that I had. Make up Shabas made wonders for my sangeet. l would say if you have the best artist then just stop having useless facial trips to the parlour. A clean up once a week and a CTM regimen every night before sleep is sufficient. All that the artist wants is a clear face and not sudden zits due to new facials and products.
A complete waxing before mehndi day is all you need from the parlour services. Mehndi artists also need to be booked early to get the comfortable time otherwise we would land getting it on wrong dates and uncomfortable timings. I booked Alafia for my mehendi. Personally, I would definitely say 2 hours is all the time needed for the mehndi. After that, just scrape it off and start working. Lol.. Seriously its of no use to have it over night.
Our parents gave us the chance to celebrate with four events. The initial engagement with a close family of 150 happened at home in June and then it was followed by a bigger engagement at Vijay Raja Thirumana Mandapam, Kovilambakkam a few months later in October . Our Sangeet happened at Hotel Westin, Velachery and Dj Vinod rocked the party and made it memorable for us with dance floor and lights.
The saree shopping began well ahead of my big day so I had sufficient time to get it stitched with all the customs works. NF Bridal Studio did a great job. My blouses were fantastic. Thanks to Vimal at NF to have patiently sat with me taking every order detail.
I always had a colour in mind and I feel every bride should finalize that specific colour she will look great in and never let anyone convince you for a colour someone else likes. After all the years of wearing different coloured clothes, the bride knows best what looks best on her. I wanted to get married in chilli red saree and found my muhurtham saree at Prakasam silks, Kanchipuram. Other sarees were from Hayagreeva silk house and Babu shah. The higher the muhurtham saree budget , the golder it gets. So I would advice any bride to stick on to a lower price range to get colours( If your mother in law insists on a higher budget... simply convince to get the rest in cash..haha.. it always comes handy :p)
Jewels were from VBJ ( one of my favourite jewellers) and a few from Saravana Elite (I couldn't believe that this particular showroom had a good variety of traditional jewels sold at fixed price) and I rented my muhurtham head set from Grand Prabhu jewellers, Mylapore.
My Sangeet dress was from Nakshathra, Annanagar and reception pink lehenga was from Kay on Cathedral road.
What was left after all this planning was to have the best photographer who could give us a wonderful memory of the events. @zero-gravity# photography was all that was needed. Vikas and Ajay make an excellent team and they made sure every frame speaks a story behind. Every picture is our treasure and the wedding movie was simply superb.
Decoration was by D. Chandrasekar uncle who will simply replicate anything that I grab off the internet :)After all this hectic planning for a year and eating up all my bridesmaids heads, the day arrived when I will have to shove off all the tension and smile (only when I realised that my saree sungu or knots were wrongly done :O)
Mishaps do happen even after careful planning. With all the tension, all I did was simply forgot everything and stepped into the muhurtham stage to see the love of my life waiting to holds my hands. His smile made me forget everything around and all I could think of was how much he could make me happy in seconds.
Our celebration din't end there, Ashwin and I travelled to Taj exotica resort and spa maldives for our honeymoon. Our ocean pool villa was the perfect place to say bye to the bridezilla in me. Haha. :P We even got married underwater! Thanks to the honeymoon scuba diving and its a must try for all couples heading to Maldives.
And oh! I forgot about my wedding invitations! With 6 long years of putting up with Ashwin and gathering the courage to put up with each other for the rest of our lives, we definitely required a special wedding invite. Mekala from Pathrika did a wonderful job in customizing every detail of our love story and bringing it together in our invitation. The minute I settled back at home after wedding, all I did was open my facebook page and unliked all wedding related pages that had gathered the whole year..haha ( They were overpopulating my newsfeed )..except for one, which was Shopzters. Shopzters page will always be my favourite and I am extremely happy that I am a Shopzters bride too.
I do tell this to all my brides to be friends seeking for advice, dream your big day your way but make sure it fits your dads pocket. Love always A proud Shopzter bride Keerthana Ashwin
