The {Un}Real Diaries : Saving the best for last…

I don’t really have anymore posts in mind for the {un}real diaries, so like a good cliché loving girl, I have saved the best for last- our photos! Now, a lot of you have probably seen our photos already-they have been posted in quite a few places for which we are grateful and truly never expected! I will try and post stuff you haven’t seen but that might be easier said than done.

Before we get to that though, it is absolutely necessary to speak about our lovely photographers- Carmen & Ingo. It was love at first sight when I found them via Kate’s blog. I spent more time than usual on their blog and even though the wedding was still months away when the time came to decide-there was no question who our photographers would be. I won’t repeat the entire story here but if you want to read about how we connected , you can check it out on Carmen&Ingo’s blog right here. I would strongly suggest you read it- I have said time and again how I love random connections and this is just the perfect story to prove it! I have to say here that there are MANY talented photographers in India- and there a couple of them who I would’ve loved to have cover the wedding. I’m just saying that the choice had nothing to do with the fact that there is a lack of talent in India(I mean that is just NOT possible , is it?),it had to do with the fact that Carmen & Ingo hit the spot directly and instantly. You know that feeling , right? When you just know? It doesn’t happen to me a lot so when it happens once in  a while, I don’t hesitate to follow my instincts. I have quite literally patted myself on the back for following this instinct. A bit modest, I know, but if Carmen&Ingo lived closer , I’d pat THEM on the back. Just got to make do with what we have.

I am going to try posting photos that you haven’t seen before but if you have, what can I say? Look at them again! It’s also to give you a feeling of what the day was like- I love all the photos but I am not sure if posting 500+ photos is acceptable. I just love the way the story unfolds through these magnificent photos.

The most beautiful feet in the world (not!!!)

You know these guys by now surely- Maya whose photos I posted here and of course Rahul of Starving Artist Videos who made our most amazing wedding video here.

A dash of filmi-ness never did anyone any harm!

I love how everyone loses their inhibitions in the fun/photo booth.

That’s us with Ingo & Carmen ♥♥

Doubt if I have to say this but all the photos here are by Carmen & Ingo Photography

Find them on facebook and twitter.

There are a whole lot of photos on Carmen & Ingo’s blog post here-Love & Colour  . I tried not to repeat too many of the photos and you can find the créme de la créme in this post! Once you are done there, head over to Kate’s blog for more here-  Magnolia Rouge . We were lucky to have a third shooter accompany Carmen & Ingo to the wedding. Steffen Bottcher was in India at the same time and took some great photos of the wedding as well which you can check out here on his blog Stilpirat.

As a closing note to this post and to the series, I want to say once more what I have said time and time before- let your wedding photographers be your best (and if necessary,biggest investment) at your wedding even if it means cutting out costs elsewhere. Trust me, no one (probably not even you) will remember the food or who the dj was at the wedding and that doesn’t even matter. What does matter are the emotions, the people, the joy that you felt during those days. The ONLY way you will have access to that 30 years from now will be the photographs. Make sure you get the best. Trust me, you won’t regret it.And, with that we come to the end of the {un}real diaries!

Thank you Carmen & Ingo for being as amazing as you are. x

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

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!

 

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.

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.

Real Wedding N&A Part II

I wasn’t meant to make you wait so long for the second part of this real wedding , but things got pretty hectic and before I knew it, I was in the middle of Kenya with no internet access. It was brilliant to be disconnected from phones and the internet but after a while, it got a bit suffocating. I just wanted to quickly check my mail, or tweet for a minute .Anything!! I just needed my internet fix! So here I am, back from the beautiful wilderness and the first thing I am doing is posting part two of N&A’s wedding. Much much delayed but I know you guys will love it!

I don’t think I mentioned it earlier but this wedding was in Delhi, which is torturously hot during the summer but in the winter, it is absolutely lovely. The days are almost always bright and sunny – perfect for a wedding out in the open. The brilliant blue skies and bright sunny days are synonymous with weddings- every one takes advantage of the weather!

The engagement ceremony and mehendi happened on the same day which meant primarily two things- one, the bride changed from one gorgeous outfit to another and two, I took billions of photos! It was hard choosing just a few to share with you but I did the best I could though I wish I could show you all!

Like always, words don’t say as much as the photographs do so let’s take a look at some of the engagement photographs.

Navdeep, the gorgeous bride, waited patiently for the groom to arrive ,she had been ready since 7 am! !Who says that it’s the women who take longer to get dressed??!

No wedding is quite the same without the bride’s friends by her side making sure she’s doing alright (and isn’t going hungry) during all the madness.

After the engagement ceremony, the bride disappeared only to reappear wearing yet another gorgeous outfit- probably my favourite out of the two! Both the outfits were by designer Mallika Mathur who doesn’t seem to have a website but you can read a little about her here.