“There having been some days in preparation,
a splendid time is guaranteed for all…”

Having a home-grown wedding is a lot of fun, as well as a lot of work. The final efforts for setup and decoration reminded me strongly of the parties, dances, open houses, fairs, and festivals that we used to organize at boarding school. Now, as then, it took a squadron of friends and family to pull it off. I’m trying to reconstruct everything that everybody did, but this is a bit like giving an Oscar speech – I’m afraid I’ll leave out someone who made a crucial contribution!

You might also like:

Pink Wedding: Child Guests Pink Wedding: Bridal Mehndi Pink Wedding: Planning Pink Wedding: My Wedding Dress

I have heard of weddings that disallow children, but that is not my style. I grew up in expat communities where kids usually attended grown-up parties, and then raised my own daughter in Italy, where kids are expected to socialize with adults in a civilized manner. Many of our guests had children, and our own family includes Mitchell, Brendan’s ten-year-old son. So I made sure that our guests knew their children would be welcome and even, as far as we could manage, looked after.

You might also like:

Pink Wedding: Decorating & Setup Pink Wedding: Bridal Mehndi Pink Wedding: Planning My Garden Year: 2019

Although I would not be wearing Indian clothing for the wedding, I wanted to have really good bridal mehndi done. I get mehndi whenever I can (usually on trips to India) but had never gone so far as to have both hands and feet decorated – that’s usually reserved for brides. Now it was my turn.

The current tradition in India is for the bride to have a mehndi party for her female friends some days before the wedding (mehndi needs a few days for the color to set and deepen). There are many mehndi artists in the Bay Area, but the wedding date turned out to be a problem: August 17th was the weekend after Indian Independence Day, August 15th, and many of the artists were booked for other events.

The artist I originally found (via a friend) was not available, but she recommended another, Varsha, who did a small drawing on me in mid-July so I could see how the settled mehndi color would eventually look with the pink of the dress.

You might also like:

Pink Wedding: Decorating & Setup Pink Wedding: Planning Pink Wedding: My Wedding Dress