Hi Guppies!
Well it was finally my time to get hitched, two weeks now officially a MRS!!!
…strangely enough that makes me feel like I should be more mature and feel older…but, funnily, the first few days make you feel all childish and giddy! Trust me, all the wedding fever and madness has made the feeling of being married soo relaxing, no more organising or stressing!
Here is my story:
My want for a simple wedding
At first I kept complaining to my parents simple nikkah no wedding reception, just let the boys side do a walima because it’s sunnah- why take on unnecessary burdens when you don’t need to?
No support came from anyone other than my hubby! I’m the eldest, and so for that reason it had to be done lavishly and with lots of people! Apparently, they argued that only those girls who do wrong things with the ‘boy’ have such a simple nikkah etc etc. I argued a lot but caved in- the stress was just not worth it!
But I managed to let them all know I would have lesser guests, not 1000, not 700 no no no! I alhumdullilah kept it down to 300! A big feat for the first wedding in the family! Immediate family alone is 200!
Tip1: I kept using the excuse that the venue hall wouldn’t fit, it’s a good excuse, and I suggest, those of you girls whom are opting for a more intimate wedding, go out and deliberately get a lovely smaller function hall and blame it on the capacity limitations when your parents bring the list of people that still want to be invited! It works!
The wedding venue
So then it came to finding the right hall. The whole rishta had been fully finalised ten days before ramadhan, so I started looking during the ramadhan period. It’s a very slow time and vendors are usually hungry for business!
My want for a simple wedding became thwarted by the temptation of it all! In the end I started being tempted by the big and beautiful halls and the alluring offers of jalebi junctions, chocolate fountains and flowers decorations, stages , runways etc. But that’s when the costs came to mind just for a hall for people to sit in and for them to fed, I felt I was blindly optimistic about how much I’d be paying-I never new weddings were sooo expensive!
So when I found a simple smallish wedding lounge which offered catering, servers, centrepieces and the whole lot in the package I went with them, trusting them to do things professionally. These guys were new and had only just started trading 3 months prior to when we went to see them- big risk which I later suffered from!
TIPS
Tip2: Note, haggling is a must when booking a venue, so brushing up on those skills are very important- go somewhere where you’re not keen on going with to practice how well you can pull the price lower. This is so that when you go to your ideal hall you’ll not only have a general idea of what the market average is but be prepared on what kinda responses they give!
Tip3: Go with your dad, vendors from ‘back home’ don’t give a damn what women think, men deal with men – chauvinistic BAST***’s!
The twist in the story
Two weeks prior to the wedding we finally started giving out invitations. The day we arrived home from going all over the country personally delivering them, our next door neighbours came rushing in saying “We have been trying to contact you guys for so long, please please don’t go with the vendor you chose for your wedding!” Imagine the shock to us all when we found out that the first wedding experience from our friends and family at the hall was terrible! The food was supposedly stale, the service slow, the toilets so dirty they couldn’t do wudhu- and may more. After my neighbours, my mother’s colleague’s dad’s relatives all came to warn us to get out asap!
Task one getting our non refundable deposit back!!
Me my mother my father and a family friend of the owner (my uncle) went to see the vendor.
Whilst my father and uncle distracted him, my mother and I snuck into the kitchen. The Vendor when booking the venue would not let us see the kitchen and anything behind the stage… We were aghast to find everything was sticky, dirty pans and plates were left behind the stage unwashed- and it was a Wednesday- three days after the Sunday event! There was a huge pot of fried onions left uncovered! Urgh!!There was a musky smell around the place, the bathrooms stank, the bridal room was not fully renovated as promised! It was just disgusting!
So there I went back, gunz ablaze firing my legal jargon at him, and he did not even flinch. He said for me to take whatever legal action I wanted I wouldn’t get the deposit back (I won’t bore you with the details). Finally my father ended things by saying Allah will decided all in the hereafter what deposit you keep now will have much bigger repercussions then- they guy then gave half the deposit back and we left!
Task two finding a new hall!
Unfortunately my dad had to work and couldn’t go running around with me to look for halls and catering and blab la, so i took my mum and went running around like mad searching for anything. The vendors could smell our desperation; all my keen skills of negotiation went out the window. Remember the tip I gave about bringing your dad along to talk to vendors? Boy am I right, we went to this wonderful hall, nothing big but mashallah very clean and pretty but the guy dealing with us was an obnoxious PIG! He’d recline back in his chair staring at us flicking his pen between his fingers behind his head and say to us ‘Oh we don’t really need your business, you can do whatever, and you must book the venue before you can try the food’ I had no patience for booking a hall and then booking separate caterers I needed an all in one, plus the guy was a complete A hole so I thought screw you I’m going elsewhere.
Finally we found a professional brother sister duo who treated me like a human being! They manage to offer us everything, but were adamant on a high price. They instead offered more for our money rather than cutting the price. So all the lavish details like lighting, jalebi junction two types of kulfi gajar halwa etc was all added on!! Sheesh so much for me wanting a simple wedding L
But Alhumdullilah we managed to save the wedding- but then had to frantically notify everyone of the change- phoning people who don’t give a definite answer whether theyr’e coming is a pain in the ASS!
The wedding dress
My husband is Pakistani and I’m Indian so it was a new idea for me that the grooms side would be paying for the nikkah/ruksati outfit, so I left it up to my mother inlaw to get done in Pakistan…
Mistake perhaps?
She told me the tailor kept delaying dates- which I totally believe because it’s normal for tailors to screw up like that, and so I only received the dress a week before the wedding! No time to return it if I don’t like it or alter it if it fits badly :’(
She got the colours perfectly right, but the tailor made a mess of the trousers making them 5 inches short! I had to pay extra for tailors and seamstresses here in London to fix it and they charged emergency prices too!!
But the thing I can’t fully get over inside is that she decided to not look at the pictures I sent about wanting it like a long gown with a train, but made it asymmetric according to the fashion in pak. It does hurt inside that she did that, but she is otherwise a wonderful and giving lady so I try really hard not to be materialistic about my dress and do appreciate that it’s beautiful non the less and I didn’t pay a penny towards it…I just wish I had my dream dress…oh well there is always the valima! 
Doing my own dupatta and makeup!
Yes I decided to do my own!
My husband had always dreamt of his wife doing her own makeup so she wouldn’t look like someone completely different on the wedding day. And I personally was happy with the idea, not only to cut cost but to show girls that it is not impossible to look radiant and glowing without shelving out £300-500 for cosmetics you can buy for £100 and keep using for a good year long!
Tip4: I flit through what seems tens of dozens of you tube vids by makeup gurus and I suggest you guys do the same- Trust me there’s no big science to it all, invest in good products because they do all the hard work! I luckily ended up assisting a friend being taught by a makeup artist…in the end I felt I knew almost as much, if not more as she did about make up!
I decided to start wearing the hijaab in ramadhan, I’m taking it easy but I thought the only way to be truly happy inside with wearing it was to wear it on my wedding day! My hubby was so proud and I felt beautiful in it. My dupatta was messy mainly because I had too many hands helping, when doing it by myself for my post wedding pics I did it immaculately! But it didnt fall off so alhumdullilah I am happy about that :D!!!
There is tonnes more to my wedding story but I wont bore you guys, there was glitches with the invitations, my mums and sisters dresses came from Pakistan short and misfitted, my brother sherwani was delivered late, during the wedding things ran late cus I trusted my uncle to take care of things (biggest mistake) and many more!
But there were many things that went right, the mehndi went off without a glitch, with popcorn and candy floss as a nice added touch for all my friends whom I couldn’t invite to the wedding. The photographers were friendly and wonderful and I will inshallah be getting professional pics from them next week! I felt so happy marrying my husband and I keep looking at the facebook pics friends put up thinking I am the luckiest girl to have such a wonderful hubby whom I can show off in front of family and friends! Lol Overall I’m glad the organising is over and now eagerly awaiting my first experience of Pakistan when going for my Walima in 3/4 months from now!!
Pics
Wedding day
I am glad everything turned out well for you! 
