The {Un}Real Diaries: The Invitation Situation

Before I show you the beautiful (if I say so myself) photographs of the wedding, it is absolutely crucial I tell you how I found Carmen&Ingo-the most awesome photographes and lovely people!

Crucial to tell you the story because the way I found them played two important roles- one, our wedding cards and two, the photographers. Oh and there is a third point as well- that  Kate is a good friend . You all know Kate if you have been reading the Unreal Bride for a while. You would know her better as the person behind the Magnolia Rouge blog(where I ‘discovered’ Carmen &Ingo but that is another story!) or Ruby &Willow (her website) or more recently , the gorgeous magazine Mag Rouge.

Kate and I have known each other a while thanks to all our online interaction over the past couple of years. All that is left is for us to actually meet! She is a super talented designer who designs gorgeous invitation suites when she isn’t busy blogging or designing her magazine or taking her puppy for a walk. Seriously, where does she get the time?

Via Magnolia Rouge

This is a nice teaser of a few of Kate’s fab designs.

When the time came for our wedding cards to be designed, the only thing that made sense in my mind was that she should do it. Poor Kate. I don’t think she knew what she had signed up for. In fact,had I known what I had signed her up for, I probably wouldn’t have done it!

It would be silly to assume that you and only you are in charge of the wedding card design. Or even that just you and your fiancé are in charge. Nope. It is you and your entire family. Approval and ideas and suggestions must come from everyone. It would be rude not to include everyone. Which we kind of did. Involved everyone at tiny levels but kept the major decision making to ourselves. Not that that was any easier. We both couldn’t have been further apart in our choices for design. The choice was as far apart as me wanting a cycle and him wanting ,well no prizes for guessing, a plane.

We both knew we wanted it to be a single card, with some flowers and minimal text. I wanted flowery looking flowers and he wanting uhmm, hallmark kind of flowers. I wanted subtle pastel colours, he wanted brighter colours. I wanted a couple of  pretty calligraphy fonts and he wanted straight forward clear fonts. It was maddening!

I had Kate in a tizzy though she never showed it or said it, I made her do things not her style ,was constantly asking can you  make a slight change here or slight change there? At one point, I just wanted to make phone calls to all the people on our list to invite them-can we do without the invitations please? If I had to rate the most difficult part of planning the wedding, the cards would get a big fat TEN as the most difficult.

Finally, after many compromises and samples, we found something we loved-an arum lily-which Kate beautifully incorporated in to our card . I wonder if she did a little dance after we sent our final ‘YES’. I sure did. Kate is just such an awesome person, never complaining and so accommodating –no wonder everyone loves her. Thank you for bending over backwards for us , it meant the world to us!

Here is our card just the way we wanted it- minimal, clean, with a flower, and a dragonfly or two thrown in for good measure !

 Sure , there were a few hurdles along the way but if there hadn’t been any, there wouldn’t have been a story to tell!

Now that you heard our card story, the next one will be a feature with our photographs. It’s about time, everyone has featured our photographs except The Unreal Bride!!! Ridiculous, I say!

Till the next edition of the {Un}Real Diaries, I bid you adieu!

P.S. If you have missed the earlier editions of The {Un}Real Diaries , you can find start here.

P.P.S. Make sure you take some time out and browse through Magnolia Rouge,  Ruby & Willow, Mag Rouge.It will be worth it, I promise you!

 

Happy 1st Birthday Ketchup!!! {and a Giveaway!!!}

Hello Readers!

Everyone familiar with the blog won’t need to be introduced to Ketchup. For the uninitiated, Ketchup Bags is a brand that makes some of the cutest bags we’ve seen and to celebrate their first birthday they let us (and in turn, you) have a little sneak peek of their new collection. Remember the fab photo shoot we did with their last collection-The Monsoon Bride??

While brainstorming for the project, we felt like every possible way to photograph a bag had already been done and since ketchup falls in the food product category (Ketchup the sauce, get it?! ) , we thought why not take pictures of the bags alongside some yummy for the tummies! And the best part of this sneak peek is that its a giveawayyyy!!!! Yayyyyy!!!!!

First, you must take a look at these neon beauties and have yourself a bit of a drool -

Now that you have seen for yourself how delicious the new collection we’re sure you want to win something ketchup-y. In order to do so – heres what you have to do

1. Leave us a comment in our comment section below telling us what you love most about Ketchups new collection

2. Go to the Ketchup page on facebook here and Like it – also leave a message on their wall saying The Unreal Bride sent you there – in case you already like their page on facebook.

3. Tweet - Another fantastic giveaway by @ketchupbags on The @unrealbride . I’m going to win! 

The competition is open till Monday the 13th of August and one lucky winner will be randomly selected and will win an accessory from Ketchups new collection. Multiple tweets are welcome but will not imcrease your chances of winning!!

p.s. : A big thank you to Ketchup for extending their birthday month (which was July! ) for us and our readers so that we could be a part of the celebration as well! Good luck!!!!

The {Un}Real Diaries : Make up & Bling

Just looking at those two words -make up and bling written together made me wonder if I should tell April to write about this since both topics are far away from my area of expertise. Now that I have started,though, I figured I might as well give it a shot. If you haven’t figured by now, make up and me are distant distant cousins who like each other sometimes and the other times, we forget about each other’s existence. Just so you get an idea , I bought my *first* lipstick a month before the wedding, and figured out the purpose of foundation.It’s true- I am 29 years old and have survived with kajal, mascara and chapstick all these years. I was (am) one of those people who’d peep in to the MAC store and wonder what actually goes on in there with all the ladies (and men) dressed up in black with these things that looked like Batman’s utility belt. It was a different world to me and kind of intimidating.

I’m not against the idea of make-up but it’s just not a priority as it is for so many people. Post wedding, I carry around a little make up pouch and feel quite ‘grown-up’.Ha! Anyway, for the wedding, I decided there would be some make up but it would have to be managed internally (read:in the Unreal Bride office) because there was NO way I was going to any beauty salon where they would most definitely paint my eyes magenta/maroon and gold regardless of the colour of my outfit. I am shuddering at the thought of that and a big poof of fake hair on my head that seems a criterion for every bride.

Thank goodness for friends who went to all girl schools and spent days and days trying out hairstyles and make up on friends.Endlessly.Who is this talented friend, you ask? None other than April! She said she would happily do my make up and boy ! was I relieved!  The combination of April + her love for make up + pinterest was the best ever!

To cut a long story short, we visited MAC, bought all the necessary condiments (?) to paint my face so that it wasn’t obviously painted (how curious is that!) and combined it with her existing stash of make-up , we were all set to go.

We did do a dry -run to test out what colours suited me and stuff. You MUST do this to know what will happen on the final day and if a certain look will work for you or not. Here is a picture of our trial run-

Erm. Best leave the wine out if you want to actually get somewhere. Clearly , I thought I was a great make up artist judging from what I did to April’s face. Let this serve as a what-not-to-do-on-your-wedding-day make up tutorial.

So,in reality the night before the wedding is when we actually did a dry run and April did a perfect job.

Thank you Mother and Amrit for the photos this day.

On the day of, everything went seamlessly- except for maybe one ‘cat’ eye becoming longer than the other (or was that the other night?) -regardless, it was rectified immediately . The make up was perfect and I looked exactly the way I wanted to. Nothing over the top but with just a little bit of drama! Here are some getting ready photos taken by a very talented friend who you all must be pretty familiar with by now- Maya Singh. She played a huge roll in video documenting the wedding so she was only ‘allowed’ to take photos right in the beginning which I am so glad she did!

Photos by Maya Singh

In case you are wondering what happened to my hair- it was a stroke of pure genius on Aprils (and Pinterests ) part where we were able to take my one side longer hair and make a really cute side ponytail situation. That was a blessing in disguise because I was sure I would have hair issues but I was wrong! Oh , joy!

Here is the picture that was inspiration for the hair-do. I couldn’t find the actual post it was linked to but if you know where it’s from-let me know!

Via Pinterest Via Victoria’s Vintage

As far as the bling goes, I like it more than I like make up , but I like silver more than gold. I didn’t want to spend truckloads on something that I would probably wear only once in my life and that is where Amrapali came to my rescue. Not very expensive, unique designs and so many things to chose from! In the end – I wore a combination of Amrapali jewelry along with some of  my Mum and Masi’s jewels. This was not pre-planned. All these decisions were made on the spot. By the end of it, I really lived up to the saying- “Something old, something new. Something borrowed, something blue.”  It was totally unintentional but not unwelcomed

Photos by Maya Singh

I guess I should end this post with some wedding day make up gyan , right? Nothing complicated to it-just remember-know what you want and stick to it. Find the right make up artist that works for you even if it means you do your own make up on your wedding. You don’t need to wear a kilo of foundation to look gorgeous.Find your style-make up wise ,jewelry wise and stick to it.

Oh,and last of all-wear waterproof mascara . xx

Read more of the {Un}Real Diaries here.

Photobooth : R+R

It’s raining photo-booths!! Not that we are complaining! Photo booths give us the perfect opportunity to expand our creativity and improve our ‘controlled’ photography. This year (by which I mean 2011)has been just such a photo boothy kind of year and not one has been the same. I am rather pleased that people put so much thought into their photo booth and it isn’t just another add-on at a wedding/party/event. The things you can do are endless and the fun to be had in a photo booth is incomparable.

This was an extra special photo booth since it was for a very dear friends engagement party . It’s nice to be appreciated by your friends for the work you do and when they treat you like professionals, you can’t help but think that maybe you are doing something (very) right.

The theme was to keep it minimal-white and gold. We had been dying to use these paper flowers seen all over Pinterest (of course) – they are so delicious looking – and this seemed the perfect opportunity. Though the flowers are YUMMY in all these colours, we decided to stick to white (since that was the theme) and to add some gold to it.

Via Pinterest, originally from here

I had shown April these flowers as an example and actually had no idea how to make them-I am challenged in that sense but thankfully she isn’t ! The next day when I went to her house, I saw her living floor was covered in paper, little helpers cutting and folding the paper and these gorgeous white flowers strewn all over! Over the next few days, hundreds of flowers were made and anyone who stopped by helped by folding or opening out a flower. The making of the flower really deserves a post of it’s own which you will have to wait for! {Coming soon : DIY tutorial for making paper flowers }

Here are some photos of the photo booth under construction in April’s home. They were up against a window and the light streaming through the paper flowers just added to the gorgeousness of it all.

Once the flowers were ready, we added some gold cloth to the bottom just to add that splash of colour. It all came together when we set up the backdrop in the little tent at the engagement. As you can see from the photos, the white cloth with the gold print on it went perfectly with the backdrop. We didn’t want too many props since we figured every one would be dressed in their finery which meant loads of colour  and over-doing the props would take away from the minimalistic feel of it all!We couldn’t resist the moustaches on a stick though and even had tiny little chalkboards and colourful frames as part of the prop box!

The lovely couple!

Here are some fun photos from the photo booth!

Check out more of our photo-booths here, here and here!

Photo Booth Styled, Conceptualised and Photographed by The Unreal Bride

FYI, our next post will be something that has been long overdue , a bridal session we had mentioned in this post here and the DIY tutorial on how to make these paper flowers! Forgive us for being so out of it lately- you will know why soon enough! Give us some time and we will be back full swing!

Real Wedding N&A Part III

What do we have in store for you this Friday? The final installment from the N&A wedding. If you have missed the earlier posts , here is Part I and Part II.

Since the wedding ceremony was at ten am, the day started bright and early .Despite the late night and long looong day the bride had had, she was shining and radiant as ever! The bride kept her make-up very natural and simple, and the painted design of red and white dots right above her eyebrows was a great addition!

 

Before the bride took off to the gurudwara for the ceremony, I managed to get some shots of her outside where in the natural light, the colour of her outfit really looked great. She wore a lehenga by Ritu Kumar who is known for her contribution to the haute couture fashion of India bridal wear.On a side note, I am a pretty big fan of the Ritu Kumar ad campaigns especially when they have Prabuddhadas Gupta as their photographer!

The wedding was in a gurudwara where the groom arrived in full force with lots of music and dancing and ofcourse, a horse The ceremony was short and sweet and after, the entire wedding party proceeded back to the fabulous farm to celebrate.