Sari!

I'm SOOO excited! I finally got to see my sari and veil/dupatta! I can't barely contain my excitement and want to show everyone. Sadly, Grandma and Momma Marg have banned me from showing anyone my outfits or jewelry before the wedding. Sigh. I guess something about "evil eye" and an element of surprise. So, here's a little snapshot of my sari and my veil.

Mr. Marg don't you dare peak! Even if its just a little taste, you are banned from viewing this!

My sari - its champagne colored silk covered in crystals and has a paisley pattern on it. Its HEAVY! I am not sure how I'm gonna walk around in it for hours...
My veil - The color looks totally different since its photographed on the ugly grey carpet in the store. Its a sheer champagne color, cathedral length with scalloped borders.

I love my outfits so much! Its a little nerve wracking not to see your wedding outfits until less than 2 weeks before your wedding, but my designer really outdid herself. If anyone is looking to get a custom made sari - Bhavana from Mehr is the woman to see. :)

Mehr Design Studio
18738 Pioneer Blvd
Artesia, CA 90701
(562) 809-6347

I know these are a tease but you don't have to wait long to see the rest since we are getting married in 10 days!

Anyone else keep their wedding garb a surprise?

Hairy Dilemma

So my makeup/hair people called me today and cancelled my appointment for my Mendhi night. UGH! I am definitely upset/mad and of course had a little breakdown but I'm back to normal now. I have a little over a week to find a replacement. It was after business hours by the time I found out so I'm gonna have to try my best to find another hair/makeup person for the Mendhi. Any suggestions for Orange County hair/makeup people would be greatly appreciated!

So after receiving that bit of news, I realized that I'd never shown the hive what my potential hair styles are going to be. I've been collecting lots of pictures of different hairstyles over the past few months. I want an up-do for my first outfit (ivory colored bridal sari) and a half-up look for my second outfit (red and copper colored lengha). Problem there is that I don't have a lot of time to change my hair and makeup so I'm hoping that I can find a style that easily transitions from all up to half down without looking messy.

I gathered these images so long ago that I'm not sure where I got them. Sorry!

Some half-up inspirations:

1. I love how simple this is - although I'm not sure if it looks too messy

2. I just really like the flower in her hair and the simple curls
Some up-do inspirations:

#1. I like this simple front sweep - although I think I'd want something more off my face



#2. Another nice and simple up - but I don't think I could pull off that front bump
Another view
#3. I love the back of this hairstyle SO much!

4. This is my favorite overall hairstyle. I saw it on The Brides Cafe and just fell in love! The wedding of Anna & Seth (photography by Ann Hamilton) was truly gorgeous. The bride's hair is perfection! I mean, she is insanely gorgeous so I'm sure thats a lot of it, but I just love the flowers and the unfussy up-do.

For better/larger pics go here: Ann Hamilton's Blog

I'm still a little clueless on what I want for the half-up style. For the up-do, I know I want a deep side par, the back of my hair to look like #3, and the front to have the crown volume and flower position of #4.

Is anyone else having more than one hair style? Anyone else have to deal with last minute vendor cancellations?

Elephants, Zebras, and Llamas, Oh My!

I am officially less than 2 weeks away from the wedding day! I've been planning this sucker since last March and I am SO tired! My wedding planning process has been filled with emotional highs and lows. If you told me a year ago that I'd be crying and angry about the cost of flowers and cake, I wouldn't have been able to believe it. I can't tell you how many times this year I've uttered the phrase "I just can't wait until this is over." Yup, I can be a drama queen. ;)

Growing you are led to believe that a wedding is all about the couple getting married. Realistically for South Asian brides (and for many other cultures I'm sure) weddings are about families joining together. Every person has an opinion about what you should do. Not only do you have to consider your parents opinions, you often times have to think about grandparents, aunties & uncles (the real and fake), brothers, sisters, and cousins. On top of that, you have to make sure that you are respecting your culture and religion. For me, that involves respecting both Sri Lankan and Indian culture as well as the Buddhist and Hindu traditions. I’m not for a second complaining about our rich cultures and religions or our wonderful and well-meaning families. I love that our wedding encompasses so much history, life and love. We are who we are because of our families, our religions and our cultures and our wedding wouldn’t be “us” without it. It is just truly overwhelming sometimes to try and consider all of it when you are planning a wedding. How can you fit so much and please so many in just a few hours on one day?

On top of all of that, the wedding industry is incredible. The flowers, cakes, chairs and tables are so gorgeous and the creativity is truly inspiring. People put so much thought and time into making weddings special. Who would have thought that you could really worry about the stamps that go on your wedding invitations? Or spend hours thinking about what favors to give out and how to wrap them? I certainly had no idea what I was getting into when I started planning this weeding. It has become an obsession of mine for our wedding to be thoughtful, unique, and perfect. I've spent a ridiculous amount of hours perusing wedding blogs, florist/photographer/design websites not to mention the tons of magazines I devour (MS Weddings, In Style Weddings, Asiana (great UK South Asian bridal mag)). I've made spreadsheets, checklists and even an entire binder filled with wedding documents and inspiration organized by categories with dividers. Yup, I bought dividers. I haven't done that since high school.

So now we have families, culture, religion, inspiration and a compulsive bride obsessed with making our wedding an event to remember. Then add another huge factor…money. South Asian weddings are notorious for being lavish. We have hundreds of guests, elaborate jewelry and bejeweled outfits. We have a guest list of about 400 people! I like to joke that we really are having a circus wedding since he is riding in on an elephant and our wedding site has zebras at it. The costs of having such a large wedding are out of control. I also feel like all costs are doubled instantly just because the service/product is for a wedding. I never knew a cake could cost thousands of dollars and that invitations could be $20+ per invite! I almost choked at my cake tasting when she busted out the price. I am feeling the budget pressure especially now as final payments are due and last minute costs are adding up. We've planned according to our budget, but its quite another story to actually cut the checks and realize that all this money is going into one day.

I know I’m not the first bride to realize this or feel all of these frustrations. I think it just all came bubbling up this morning because the wedding is just around the corner and my to do list is 5+ pages long. I feel like a bridezilla for working so hard on this wedding, wanting so much and becoming so focused on the details. All this heartache and drama just can’t be worth it for one day. So, I tried to remind myself today that I need to focus less on the actual things in the wedding, and more on the people. As cliché as this sounds, I know that what will make our wedding perfect is having all the people we love with us. I just need to make it through all the other frustrations to get there. 12 days and counting!

Do any of you feel this way as your wedding day gets closer? How do you deal with it?

Cakealicious

I'm sorry I've been MIA lately - I'm in a last minute scramble for wedding stuff and I will have many things (programs, favors, escort cards) to share in the near future. In the meantime, I'll give you some visuals of fantastical wedding cakes that make me hungry every time I see them.

Choosing my wedding cake was quite the process. My Mom used to bake/decorate cakes in Sri Lanka so she is obsessed with having an elaborate cake for the wedding. I think she'd make it herself if she wasn't doing a zillion other things before the wedding. My inspiration cakes were all elaborate and sari-like:

I have no idea where this image came from- sorry!

Sari Cake from a Sugar Cakes
Image courtesy of Amy Squires

We went on over six of tastings but I'll spare everyone a review of all of them. Let Them Eat Cake located in Costa Mesa, California was one of the bakeries really stood out. They are food network challenge winners, make beautiful cakes that also taste delicious. Mr. Margarita was floored with their cakes and didn't believe they were real. He even took pictures on his cell and sent them to his parents. Their cakes were so gorgeous but pricey for the design we wanted, so we explored other options.

Geisha Cake

Wicked Witch Cake

After all the cake tastings, we ended up choosing Erica O'Brien Cake Designs based in Long Beach, California. Erica bakes all her cakes with only the best ingredients and will work with your budget to create the cake of your dreams. She completely customizes everything for you from design to flavors and will pretty much make anything you can dream of.

Some of Erica's work courtesy of her website:

How cute is this cherry cake!

That's a handmade sugar peony flower

You can choose three cake flavors so we picked vanilla bean, chocolate and almond (they even come in easy to eat cupcake form). You also get to choose five fillings to sample. I mentioned that my mom loves toffee, so Erica experimented and created a delicious toffee filling just for her. In addition to the toffee, we choose chai buttercream, passion fruit, mango, and vanilla bean. The cake and the fillings were delicious and her mock drawing of our cake was just what I wanted. We decided on a cake with an orange background (like the Amy Squires picture above) and design lifted from my wedding invitation and sari pattern.

We choose the toffee, chai and mango fillings. Did anyone else choose unusual cake flavors?

Zebras Are Coming To Our Wedding

I just flew back to LA tonight to work on our wedding which is coming up in less than 30 days! Its freaking me out a little bit, but some deep breathing, Coffee Bean and So Cal sunshine should help. :)

I am going on a site visit/inspection tomorrow with my wedding coordinator, the fabulous Mary Sushinski from Occasions To Remember and a team of my vendors (DJ, caterer, elephant person (ha), photographer, videographer, etc). With this appointment coming up, I realized that I never told the hive about my wedding venue.

My hunt for a venue was long and full of struggles. A lot of options were crossed off my list right away because we had certain restrictions:

1.) Had to hold at least 350 people
2.) Allowed outside catering (Mr. Marg insisted on Indian food)

We made a ton of appointments all over Southern California. My first big mistake was going to look at venues that were waaayyy out of our price range. We visited the St. Regis Monarch Beach which is one of the most beautiful hotels I have ever been in. It had beautiful architecture and decor, a view of the ocean (albeit from far away), a beautiful outside ceremony location with a certain California vibe to it that I can't explain. I was head over heels in love. Next we visited the Montage in Laguna Beach. It was similarly fabulous but I was even more in love because the ocean waves were literally a few feet away from the ceremony location. There were even these cute little bunnies hopping around the lawn. Sigh. My dreamy bubble was popped when I realized that there was absolutely no way we could afford to hold a reception at these locations with such a large guest list. I wish I hadn't visited those hotels because honestly the next set of hotels we visited paled in comparison. It might have also been because we visited a hotel that had astroturf on their ceremony lawn. Ugh.

The St. Regis in all its glory

The Montage

The Hyatt in Huntington Beach was the first hotel that we considered seriously. It had gorgeous Spanish-inspired decor, was close to the beach and fit our two main criteria. My Dad was definitely much happier with the costs too. Though for some reason, I just wasn't feeling it. I wanted that feeling you are supposed to get when you find the wedding dress but for our venue instead. Although the Hyatt was gorgeous, I wanted a location that was unique and would be something our guests would remember.

The Hyatt

I stumbled upon Saddlerock's website when I was looking up winery venues in Southern California. I wasn't totally sold from the pictures so after a slew of emails, the site coordinator wrote me and said "You really do need to see the location in person! Its breathtaking!" She couldn't have been more right. My best friend from high school, my Mom and I drove the hour from my house in Orange County to Malibu and were floored. Well actually, at first we were a little weirded out. The gates to the property opened and the first thing we saw was a small pack of bison roaming around. Seriously, bison. We kept driving, passed some horses and then got to some zebra. Horses are sort of normal but zebra? Then we finally got to the garden setting we were considering for our wedding location. Once I saw the huge willow trees, the sprawling lawn, the pool and the wooden bench swing I was sold. It was so beautiful and unique. Even though I always thought I wanted to be married near the beach, I couldn't walk away from Saddlerock.

The Semler family owns the entire 1000-acre ranch and have lived on the property for over 27 years. The ranch has 65-acres of vineyards and is home to dozens of horses and many exotic animals (zebras, peacocks, etc). I can't really explain the exotic animals but it fits in with Mr. Margarita riding in on an elephant so I'm going with it.

One of the Zebras courtesy of Elizabeth Messina

A wedding couple with one of the horses courtesy of Elizabeth Messina

Pics from Saddlerock's website

The tree we are getting married under :)

I can't wait to recreate this picture!

Saddlerock has been an ideal location for me because it gives me the freedom to pretty much do anything I want. Our blank canvas is definitely a lot more work than a hotel because we literally have to bring everything in from napkins to a kitchen. I think/hope in in the end all this work will be worth it.

Has anyone else chosen an unsual location for their wedding?