Disclaimer:
* If you are interested in extravagant functions, expensive stages, designer lehngas, tons of jewellery and rest of the shenanigan attached with desi weddings then I am sorry this is not the right thread for you. I have been a very old member of this forum so just wanted to share a very personal and important event of my life with lost old friends who are not on facebook so here it goes* :halo:
**The Background: ** I was never one of those girls who plan their wedding since the day they have laid eyes on their first Barbie or Ken for that matter, for me marriage is a very sacred event that has to be thought about the way it is i.e. life altering experience. Luckily my to be husband also thought the same which made it so much easier to have a simple wedding, we literally despised unnecessary rasms, display of wealth, drama and stress that came along with desi weddings.
I have been supporting myself since I was in high school so I was not ready for any one to chip in the expenses even if they were my parents just because “laug kya kahaingay”. Also last year I had bought a house which has dented my savings a lot; the same was the case with my husband as he has also bought a house recently so financially we were both in the same state. Also we didn’t had any vacation days and didn’t wanted to wait till the end of the year for a trip back home to get married so that was also a factor in our low profile wedding as our families are back home. Another thing that helped us lower our expenses was that we vowed to put aside equal amount of money to help some one deserving in Pakistan for their wedding for whatever we were spending on ours so never went out of budget.
The whole thing took around less then 2 months starting from when I was introduced to my now husband for the first time in mid of February this year to April 12 (which is also my birthday) when we got married. Before the wedding my conversations with hubby comprised of issues like how will we be handling our finances, my transitioning from NYC to a pind in North Carolina, what are our short and long term goals and how to achieve them, what expectations we have of each other for our in laws, friends etc. instead of fussing over how many guests to invite / the bridal lehnga is not ready / how to color coordinate our attires (I know, I know it all sounds boring na 
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I managed everything on my own other then my husband’s trip along with my full time job still it didn’t seemed like a toll arranging a wedding in 5 weeks. I have couple of siblings here but my eldest brother is dead busy at work and my younger siblings had exams going on. My mother was also leaving Karachi to go to Saudia as my family is settled there so she didn’t had enough time to go shopping and buy me the best stuff out there 
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Anyways to cut it short, my wedding was one of the most cherished moments of my life where I was simply happy, relaxed and enjoyed every single bit of it. Alhamdulilah there were no last moment issues and even if there were our main goal was to look beyond them and just enjoy the whole experience. All in all I am so happy with how everything went, I couldn’t have wished for anything much better then this. The only thing that I might have missed was rest of my family and parents but they were on skype through the whole event. Now my siblings are also thinking to have low profile weddings for themselves so I guess someone had to be the trail blazer.
Mehndi:
We found some one near Jackson Heights to come to our place and put mehndi on my and my sister’s hand and skyped that to the rest of the family around the world.
Nikkah Day:
My husband flew in the same day, went to the hotel and changed for Nikkah while I was getting ready at home. My dress was sent by my mother from Pakistan and I think it was for around 5k PKR. My mum also sent me some matching jewellery and churiyan. For make up I had hired a local MUA through facebook, I think she overdid the makeup despite the fact that I asked her to keep it light but may be I am not use to makeup at all that’s why it looked heavy to me 
Our Nikkah was scheduled after Jummah Prayers at the Manhattan Islamic center. Unfortunately or fortunately it started raining heavily so we had to change our plans of the outdoor photo shoot to another day. Any ways we were waiting at the masjid for my husband and his friend to come but as they were new in new york, they got lost and ended up in Brooklyn twice despite following the GPS lol. I still tease my hubby that his intentions were not on the right place 
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When he came we had a simple Nikkah with my family and his friends present which was skyped to the rest of the world, went back to his hotel to change and get some pictures and we were done. I hired a photographer after searching from facebook and masha Allah she did an amazing job. We paid her around 700$ total for the coverage of 6 hours for the wedding day and the central park photo shoot afterwards.
Thanks every one
