market day...

Once a week we make a trip to the market in the nearby town. And yes, I absolutely adore, how after years and years of city life, we don’t just go shopping, but “go to the market in town”, like they used to do in Anne of Green Gables or Pride and Prejudice. I can just picture horse drawn carriage full of wicker shopping baskets…The fact that it takes us about 10 minutes to reach there is another story.

Indian markets aren’t maybe beautiful in the most obvious way, but they sure are picturesque! There are all the obvious: exotic fruits, colors, shapes, but what always amazes me is the quantity of everything, the piles and mountains of veggies, flowers, spices.Even the most ordinary ones look impressive in such setting!

happily ever after

Over the weekend, we celebrated our wedding anniversary and Anant’s birthday. We even managed to squeeze in a short visit to the place where we got married. It is really hard to believe, that the whole year has passed already. I guess it’s because we put so much time and energy into organizing, decorating and DIY-ing the whole thing.

As we didn’t want the typical Indian affair with the stage, videographer and million people we’ve never seen before, we had to put a lot of effort into making it happen our way. If you have to rely on people who have certain vision of how the wedding should look like, it’s often easier to just get to work and do things yourself.

And so we did. After many frustrating shopping trips, I made both of my dresses and some of the accessories. We designed our own invitations, wedding website and even phone app, which turned out to be a great decision, since the invitation delivery was totally messed up.

Though we hired the decorator, he was mainly responsible for the lighting, sound and some power generators, while the family helped us out with creating photo booths and wedding gazebo. I even had my friends to do my mehendi and hair, while I took care of the makeup. I know that some girls like to be pampered one The Day, but getting ready with your friends really takes the pressure off. Plus I’ve seen enough drag queen bridal makeups to get myself into that pickle.

One thing I’ve learned, was that all the wedding planning tools you can find online really help. Our wedding wasn’t, perhaps, the most organized one, but we managed to do everything we planned, including the vodka-spiked coconuts and Chinese lanterns.

After going through the whole process, I would probably do few things differently, or avoid one or two nerve wrecking situations, but on the whole, I think we made our dream wedding happen.

Fab Bag failing big...

I’ve been infatuated with Fab Bag for a long time and, to be fair, I had good reasons! It was fairly priced, cosmetics were fun and useful and their customer service was great. And then it all changed, right around the time we moved.

The disappointments begun with very late delivery of August bag. The September bag was returned to sender, after courier was unable to locate our house. It was rather strange since they delivered the previous one, but having good experience with Fab Bag so far, I figured it was just a glitch in the system.

After some time October bag and Men’s bag were delivered – again very late, missing one product and in poor condition. September Bag was still missing

Fab Bag crew first implied that the courier company was to blame, than promised to send missing products ASAP and provide tracking details. Nothing happened. It continued for some time: promises of quick resolution, complete lack of action followed by apologies. Finally, today I received a package containing EMPTY BAG. I understand that mistakes can happen, missing products, late delivery, it’s all understandable, but I really wonder how someone could courier a virtually empty box and not notice it?!

At the moment November bag and men bag are due, September bag and missing product are still M.I.A. It’s really sad and quite shocking that company, with which I had only good experience, can treat regular customer (or any customer for that matter) in such a way. I guess all infatuations must come to an end at some point…