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…

garden bliss

Since we moved to our new place, we were living somewhere between total bliss and constant battle to get organized. It is definitely a challenge to keep up with the demands of huge house and garden but it is so worth it! The house is still “under construction”, we are continuously playing with furnishing and decorating all the rooms, but the garden is, finally, up and running. Anant, handy as he is, put up a lovely swing on one of the trees, we got some garden furniture and beach beds, and made the space “relax – ready”. It turned out to be perfect for all sorts of garden dos – from bbq to high tea, not to mention taking the Cat for his daily walks.

Other than that, it’s quite fun to discover all the plants and creatures around the house. It’s like our private version of Secret Garden. There are coconut palms and banana trees. We even had few monkeys, having their own garden party, while waiting for the fruits to ripen. Another thing I’ve learned is that bananas here grow to about the size of my forefinger. That’s the funny thing about fruits and veggies here- they make you feel like Alice in Wonderland after the “eat me” cookie. Lemons are the size and shape of limes while cucumbers can grow to the size of an arm, so, I guess, it’s only natural for bananas to be tiny.

In the front garden, there is chikoo tree, with the family of giant fruit-bats, and jack-fruit tree. Now, jack-fruits are very new to me. They are huge, kind of misshapen and spiky – like big, mossy stones. I have yet to try one – supposedly they are totally delicious but rather smelly. Then there are tiny humming birds, several health plants which I can’t tell apart and lemon grass, which we planted ourselves. We even had a ghost making mysterious noises every night, but it turned out to be a merry family of chipmunks nesting between ceiling and the roof.  

We still need to make watering the grass a part of our daily routine. I just hope we manage before it’s too late …