Our Big Day, Finally!

So the big fat Greek wedding was finally over and done with. Well it wasn’t big or fat or Greek but you know I just wanted to sound witty there. Not so funny? Didn't think so either. I'm finally coming to accept my lack of skills in humor; I seem to be plain lame. Back to the big day! It’s already been 2 weeks! Unbelievable I say un-buh-leevable!

Let’s first get the emotional aspect over and done with. It was hard! You live in a home where you see your parents and siblings every day, yet sometimes you even hardly see them day to day, but when the day arrives where you know you’re not going to be bunking there every night, its hard man, real hard. Being someone who considers my parents almost as best friends, actually more like my kids sometimes! It was a lot to bear (luckily I was not thinking sad things during the wedding!). The day after the wedding I held on to my always comforting husband and cried my eyes out. Let me tell you I did this the day before the wedding as well (this time holding on to my always wonderful parents).

No matter how happy and joyous the event itself is, the wedding after all is just a one off event! No one emphasizes on the leaving and cleaving aspect of it, the bittersweet reality. Before marriage my phone would be used on the man, but now the phone is used on the fam! Ironic in a sense.

So let’s talk happy and review now! The wedding! Everything went off well in a summary. Was fairly worried that since we opted for severe or drastic cost cutting methods, that stuff might look cheap or not that tasteful but lo and behold! It was everything Dimi & I wanted. On that day we forgot about being stressed out and thinking about this going right/wrong and that going right/wrong, and just left it and enjoyed everything in our own world! So time to time I still replay it all over and over and am joyous for that attitude we kept!

Starting off with the church marriage service, it was short, almost too short as we did not have too many bits and pieces, it was the standard service conducted by 2 priests. I was hoping there would be SOME drama by our Paige boy, you know walk funny down the aisle but he was perfect after his mom's & dad's chastising just before!

Photo credits to Studio U

My cousins who flew down all the way from Bangladesh for the day and helped out with giving out hymn sheets from way before the service started! It was really hot! But it was a life changing time for us, saying our vows and exchanging our rings. The mere symbolism was overwhelming.

Then registration time, once again a near and dear friends voice and another near and dear friends fingers on the piano brought to life a powerful song called “just let me say”, a gospel song which really portrayed what our marriage was, a sort of thanksgiving to the father we love, the friend we know, Jesus our Lord and Savior. (Dimi’s song choice!) Thanks to Devashrie (Best man’s fiancé), amazing voice! And Surath for making wonderful music with his fingers (sounds a bit wrong!)
But you know what I mean! The sound was also done by one of our most nearest and dearest couples who came all the way to not only check on flower décor but also provide transport to the organist. Thank You Shem & Shavindri! We owe you big time for your wedding in August; we will be thanking you with an abundance of confetti! oh and also, THE WALK OUT as husband & wife was pretty tough! The decor was such that we had to walk zig zag! hehe :D

Flower décor, simple yet averagely elegant, we personally loved it all! Hats off to Flowery Décor for really bringing out the essence of simple beauty! Bouquets were done by a Friends Aunty who once again went to the extent of getting Tiger lilies from Oman just cuz they were out of season here in Sri Lanka! Every other bouquet other than my bridal was artificial hence much much cheaper. 

Photo credits to Bamanie K(Another wonderful friend & photographer :))

Dresses, all anyone said was gorgeous! Mine was done by a friend and she did a great job and when I say great and perfect and stuff people, I am not blowing my own trumpet, everything is measured depending on if Dimi and I got what we envisioned before the big day!  Oh about the dress though, I found the train a bit difficult as I got paranoid each time it dragged on the floor and got dirt on it! My short veil was a comfort but for the beach breeze it went crazy! The veil was hired by the way. 

Photo credits to Studio U

I was so worried the maids dress color would come off as boring and dull (as our dearest best man pointed out when he saw the sample cloth!) but guess what? They blended in with everything perfectly! My sisters looked amazing! Flower girl was cute with her basket of flowers and Paige boy is literally my dream guy! I do not know what my wedding would have been without him! He managed to bring a smile on everyone’s face, many blessings to the amazing mom and dad of his. Love you guys a lot!

Photo credits to Shivanka D (Our Groomsman and OTHER wonderful friend & photographer!)

My hair and makeup, nice and simple enough as I wanted. I specifically asked beautician to keep it subtle and she did so, hair down, flower on the side, not too much, not too little!

Cake Structure was all boxes of cakes, as I have mentioned in a previous post of mine, got many compliments regarding it and it was so so so practical for us! We used up all for our small homecoming plus to give out to a few uninvited others! (okay not that few, we had just 150 guests remember??) The structure itself was done by my bouquet lady and the cakes were all made my darling Nanna who celebrated her birthday that very day as well!

Photo Credits to Bamanie K (Our Fav Cake Shot!)

 

Photography, they managed to capture “us” quite well cuz we were relaxed and eager to be natural, but trust me it got pretty annoying as hours passed by and I had to keep smiling, then I was not so natural cuz my mouth literally hurt when they asked me to smile so many times at a stretch! (Almost like I had a stroke coming on) But Studio U was so easy to work with and communicate, we felt comfortable.

Hotel service, good! Dinner was tasty apparently, I could not eat much! Husband whacked though! 1 elevator was busted so people could not get down easily to see us in our embarrassing going away pickup drive courtesy our best man and groomsman and a sloth we know! It was not so easy getting on top of a pickup in a saree! I am so bad with sarees! But well the groom threw my bouquet (something I should have done but oh well, his secret fantasies I guess) and helped me up. There were tin cans attached to the rear end of the cab, so as it drove by with us standing as if we were on top of the world (OK fine bit of an exaggeration there), the tins were screeching all the way until they came off! I think we made a police officer very unhappy.

Slideshow! All thanks to our sweet sisters. It was a collection of photos of Dimi and I individually, and together. They were not all nice ones of us, pretty embarrassing ones too which made it all the more fun to watch. We are really grateful for the trouble they had taken to do it for us, and in the end it was one of the best parts of our big day, nice to know it brought out a few “awws” and a tear or 2(not our tears). Love them like mad, but then why do I need to state the obvious right?

Speeches, 1^st one was by our best man and another “near and dear” friend (the sloth I mentioned earlier), it was touching, funny and rather tainted! I personally thought they should have dished out more dirt! But the cowards were too scared of the oldies.

As you can see, yes your eyes are not tricking you, they had to raise the passion fruit glasses cuz we didnt have booze of any kind! Some people had already drunk em juices by the time of their speech but people made use of water! intelligent no?? (sarcasm - pretty embarrassing! :D)

2^nd speech, so obviously I am biased here, the best speech in the whole wide world (tee hee, to me okay!!!) by my handsome husband(wink wink),  it was not emotional nor too lovey dovey, it was just spot on in every sense for me and it sounded just like the man I knew, the man I loved with every word he spoke. Managed to bring a tear or 2(not my tears, I had my peak smile on throughout, I was elated, was on top of the world. Was trying hard to not let any tears slip), so not bad eh? (Speech ended with him inviting his "Beautiful Wife" to the dance floor! )

Photo credits to Bamanie K

First dance, oh well you know the usual ballroom dance to a song that had a fair amount of sentiment, a song that Dimi and his camel friends sang to me over the phone almost 7 years ago! We chose that because the lyrics were not all too mushy but had just the right amount of what we stood for. 

My favorite line is:

 “The world will turn, and the seasons will change,
and all the lessons we will learn will be beautiful and strange.
We'll have our fill of tears, our share of sighs.
My only prayer is that you realize
you'll always be beautiful in my eyes.”

Then came our retinue dance! Dimi’s bright idea to do something different and not the same old ballroom thing, namely dance to Grease lightening, summer nights, you’re the one that I want etc, in other words a grease mix!  And I loved that idea, so we went crazy!! It was soo unrehearsed! Cuz we met up just 2 days before and on the day of the wedding we were all over the place, so decided to keep some of the practice session moves in mind and concentrate on our partners and dance the song away!

Last dance but not least was the dance with my father, we danced to Unforgettable By the father daughter duo, Nat King & Natalie Cole. It was a simple ballroom dance, and guess who joined? the Paige Boy & Flower Girl! They were there at our dance as well but this seemed more romantic for the two of them, you know the song sort of spoke what their baby minds were thinking! since this would probably be the last time they ever meet, hence they wanted to make each other know how unforgettable they are to each other.

You know its again un-buh-leevable how time flies during a wedding, we got so late to come cuz Dimi said no point being on time cuz our friends won’t be there, it sort of bored some people I guess but by the time we came and started things off, all our friends were there so they didn’t miss the slideshow, speeches or dances! But once again there were pros and cons in that move we made; we should have known our guests a bit more cuz by the time we changed to our going away outfits it got so late that LOTS of people had to leave. I don’t blame them. But then the most important closest family and friends were there out of the 150 people we had.

So let’s get down to the biggest disappointments, sorry but the DJ was bad! I mean we went cheap but I did not assume they would give that sort of service! For example, for cutting of cake we wanted James Taylors, “how sweet it is” and you know what they played? SHOWERS OF BLESSINGS! How inappropriate! We hated it! The day before the DJ concerned assured us that everything we asked was in order but then what was that? Oh and some of the songs that Dimi wanted to be played, sentimental ones, hardly any! They seemed to manage to play the special songs the way we wanted but not the randoms! The announcing was just as horrible. Now that was an example of going cheap and getting real bad results! Although I heard the old people were happy with the music.  But then let’s put it like this, maybe couples usually don’t give such big song lists as we did, so they did play few of the ones on the list but was a bit annoyed of the highly clichéd love songs like Shania Twain's stuff that were on! And also how they did not do anything the way we had asked in the order page we had given to them. Bestman or Dimi had to constantly go reminding them to do this and do that and in the process we missed out on the pre planned flow of events!

But you know we know that was all part of the plan. Nothing is perfect being perfect, its perfect with all its little hiccups, mishaps and imperfections and that’s what our wedding was to us. But let me go on about 1 or 2 more hiccups. Because we were changing into a going away, lot of time was taken and we could not dance much with the crowd! And when we came back we could not take 1 or 2 group photos of some important people! But oh well, at the end of the day those were like needles in a haystack! I know I know, metaphor doesn’t match that much, go figure!

Photo credits to Studio U

So that’s all I can remember for now, and I can’t say every single thing cuz there is just so much! But what made our wedding different was the people, the lovely people who were a part of everything (weddings are usually boring but of course when you are the couple it never is! Hehe). Was extremely happy that Dimi's Bro, Various aunties, uncles were able to make it for that day!!! The Day felt Complete!

and also Special thanks to Preveen!!!

Thou art my mentor in photography, love your photos enjoyed having you around, especially to keep me company, hehe :D oh and apologies for being beaten up! Thats my sister for you!

Everyone made it ever more special and memorable to us. Happy to have made our parents proud. Happy happy happy! 

Photo credits to Studio U

So wedding over, I can talk about gifts now, but will blabber on that bit later in another article. So we are settling down these days. Honeymoon and all that over (once again another article!), we have been so busy but you know what? it has been truly enjoyable doing stuff together(warning: do not misinterpret "stuff"!!!!), waking up together, finding problems in the house, fixing them, arranging, and making food!

I know in years to come these things will be meaningless chores of the day but as you start off, the content feeling you get in all the hard work and toil in making a home, is actually enjoyable, I know I am sounding like a 16 year old kid, but I don’t mind, I am what I am no? Our house is small, but we have made it a home, and life is sweet.

Photo credits to Studio U

I am eternally grateful for my blessings.