Bride's To Do List

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Consider the jewellery you are wearing in other wedding & pre-wedding events.

Most brides want thier wedding cermony look to be their highlight, so ensure that your wedding jewellery is different to what you wear on your other wedding events.
Ways to vary your jewellery at your wedding events:

1. Headpieces: vary your headpieces between: jhoomer, Pakeezah jhoomer, matha-patti, tikka, nothing. E.g. If you are wearing a jhoomer on your wedding cermony, consider wear a matha-patti on your medhi.
2. On a pre-wedding event consider wearing just earrings & a head piece, as you are the bride do go for quality to set you able all but as ur buying less ur budget can be used to opt for better quality items! E.g. just big earrings and a tikka OR earrings and matha patti (this is really nice, as only the bride wears a matha-patti but by wearing only with earrings gives the matha patti a modern twist and looks geat for a pre-wedding cermoy!)
3. Size, Quality, Colour... of course.
   

Tell your chosen retailer what you want. All reputable retails will want to sell you what you want instead of pushing sets onto you. Tell the retailer what you want and if they are not interested, consider going elsewhere! It is not always possible to get what you want, but at the very least you deserve to be served by someone who will at least try.

Be open to suggestions. I know I said decide what you want, but be aware that good retails know about latest fashions. So take photos of your outfit, show them to the retailer and ask what they would suggest. We recommend showing photos as you can e-mail them to online retailers, such as us, but also it's a lot safer taking a photo out shopping that your actual outfit (one bride sadly damaged her outfit while out shopping, it's easily done!)

Purchase the set of your dreams. Having done the above we hope this leads you to buying the perfect set for you

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Wedding Decorations

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When you say “I do,” what are you hoping your surroundings look like?

A lot of brides-to-be hope for a beach wedding, which can be great way of getting married. You could aim for an actual on-the-sand ceremony, or you could do something like this — have your wedding within the comfortable confines of a beachfront hotel. You won’t accidentally get some uncomfortably large man sunbathing in an uncomfortably small swimsuit(or, heaven forbid, in nothing at all!) in your wedding pictures, but you still get the sunshine and refreshing salty air of a beach wedding.

Above, the decorator used a classic arch and just covered it with flowers. For draping the seats along the aisle, the decorator used tulle and gathered it underneath pretty purple and white arrangements. Of course, one caveat to beach weddings would be the wind.

Of course, many brides also dream about a garden wedding. This gardens can have a cool dome that the decorator can rim with flowers. The decorator can also cover all the pillars, including the ones placed alongside the aisle, with flowy chiffon. Pink and white flower arrangements sit on top each aisle pillar and the couple’s initials — A and M — are laid out artfully with red, pink and white rose petals in the middle of the aisle.

The flowers used for the above wedding ceremony were all purple phalenopsis orchids. Setting aside how expensive that probably was, they sure do make a big visual impact. The florist used the flower both in the arrangements framing the head of the aisle and in the aisle arrangements. And they had a nice backdrop there — water!

The aisle in this wedding was draped with organza and gathered with red roses, white orchids and lemon leaf. There was no aisle runner, but the edges of the aisle were scattered with pink and red rose petals. The half trellis at the head of the aisle were decorated with branches, white phalenopsis orchids and red roses. Love the branches look!

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Things you should keep in mind, before selecting your wedding dress

There are lots to think about when you shop for your wedding dress. As friends look for their own dress, Tajweddingservice, offer advise from our own experience. There are several things that we suggest before you even try a dress on. Here is our advice to you if you’re starting out for the first time:

1. Understand the different silhouettes, necklines, and price ranges. People will talk “wedding dress talk” to you so it’s easier if you understand what they’re talking about. Wedding Dress Creator lets you play around with dress styles.
2. Look online a bit to see what strikes your fancy – If you’re motivated, bookmark or print out a couple of dresses to take with you when you go shopping. It’ll help the consultant who is helping you find a dress. Tryweddingchannel.com or brides.com.
3. Watch wedding shows, like Say Yes to the Dress – set your DVR to watch the new episodes so you can see other brides with your body shape and see what looks good on them.
4. Check out bridal magazines – look through the bridal magazines at your local bookstore. There’s always articles and ads about what’s the latest fashion.
5. You should frequently check Wedding Channel’s dress search as it is often found really helpful. you can find a dress that you liked and then the store will carry it for you. In the end, finding the store that carries dress will be quicker than trying to find the dress by going store to store.

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Wedding Guest Etiquettes

Withour experience and problems faced [=, Tajweddingservice can provide you with a list of do's and dont's when you go to someones marriage.

There’s a lot of material out there regarding etiquette that the bride and groom should follow, but very little about wedding guest etiquette. If you’ve never been to a wedding before, the whole ordeal can be a bit confusing for the guest as well. Here are a few tips:

1. Reach Venue Spot on time! A lot of guests think “oh it’s a given that I’m going so I don’t need to Reach on time.” It really does help the couple if everyone, including the bridal party, reach late. The couple has a lot of other things to do for the wedding as a whole and chasing you down for your response. Plus, Representatives have deadlines for a reason – venues require final guest counts, placecards need to be made/printed, favors need to be made/ordered, etc

2. Do not ask if you can bring your significant other or a guest to the wedding or rehearsal dinner. If your significant other is invited to anything, the couple will make sure you know. Think about the awkward situation you’re placing the couple in when you ask if you can bring your significant other or a guest. First, you are asking that the couple or their parents or whoever pay for your significant other’s dinner/presence. Second, if the couple decided not to invite your significant other, there’s probably a good reason (e.g., they can’t afford it). As much as the couple should be honored by your attending their wedding, you, as a guest, should be honored that you were asked to attend such an important event in their lives.

3. Leave checks blank. Or just write one of the couple’s names on it. Most people probably don’t realize this, but if you write out a check to both names (or with the wrong last name), some banks won’t deposit the check unless both names are on the account (which may not be true for some couples). Also, you might think that the name you know them by is legally their name, but it might not be. For example, if someone goes by a nickname or the bride doesn’t change her last name (*gasp* yes, it happens). It’s awkward for the couple to go back to those who graciously gave gifts and ask them for a redo.

4. Appreciate the bride and groom. Planning a wedding is no joke. A lot of time, effort, and money go into planning a wedding. Try to show your appreciation, even for the little stuff, that the couple has done to make this day fun and enjoyable for you. Hopefully, the couple appreciates the time, effort, and money it took for you to attend their big day.

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Great Idea for Wedding Gift Stamps

Wedding themed postage stamps are a fun way to add a festive, finishing touch to your wedding stationary. And I wish to share a small knowledge with you TajWeddingServices blog readers. In USA, For a little over $1 a stamp, you can choose from numerous designs on specialty websites like zazzle.com and weddingstamps.net.

But with so many save-the-date cards, bachelor(ette) party invites, wedding invitations, response cards, and thank-you notes to mail, sticking a $1 specialty stamp to each mailing item quickly adds up to hundreds of dollars in extra postage costs.

One money-saving solution to getting love-themed stamps for your wedding stationary is to buy Valentines Day stamps in bulk from your local post office around the weeks of Valentines day. Every year since 1973, the USPS has issued a newly designed love stamp to celebrate the holiday. They’re sold for the same price as regular stamps (just 49 cents!), half the price of the specialty stamps you get online.

This year, the USPS V-day design was “Love Ribbons”, a two-color stamp with the word “love” written in calligraphy. It’s perfect for wedding postage needs, and is a forever stamp, so it’ll last until your wedding date and afterward! Check out this year’s stamp. Not bad huh?

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Personalised Wedding Rings

For a couple looking for unique and personalised his and hers wedding rings, the interior of the finished ring holds an impression of your partner's finger, which will encircle yours forever.

These hand-finished rings are available in gold, silver, white gold or platinum with your choice of polished or unpolished exterior surface and all rings are finished to have glowing polished edges. You can also select from two widths: slender (0.3cm) or broad (0.7cm) with prices starting at £600.

Rings can be created in two simple ways. Couples can come to our studio in Bloomsbury central London or we can send you out a specially-designed impression kit. The kit includes full instructions and moulding materials, along with a ring measure (a wooden reference ring that models your chosen width and depth) and a robust set of return postage boxes.

Impression Kit

Rings and gift box

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3 Ways to Make Your Husband Easier to Love

Today I thought I would share three ways to make your husband easier to love. Can I stop with just three? I must, or what will I write about tomorrow? OK, here goes:

1. The next time you get upset at whiskers on the sink or socks on the floor or crumbs in the den, check the clock. When your unhappy or angry feelings finally subside, check it again. Now measure how quickly you can clean up his mess and feel good about your home again. Which one improves your mood faster? Neither of them changes his behavior. For this, you need to Find Third Alternatives together. Your improved mood will help there. It will also help you receive and enjoy any kisses or kind words or thoughtful acts he might offer. You want these, don't you?
2. Another way to make your husband easier to love is simply to avoid mocking him or complaining about him to others in his presence. The male chemical soup of hormones makes it much harder for them to be loving when such things happen. It just does. Husbands are a lot easier to love when they are showing us love.
3. The third way? Treat your marriage like one long Easter egg hunt. Go looking for love. If your parents love showed up at the dining room table, look for yours in the bedroom or the garage, too. If your friend reports being loved during the workday, look for yours after dinner or over breakfast. If you were expecting to find love in the form of cash, make sure you don't overlook the eggs containing supportive words, physical delights, and becoming truly known and accepted. The more love you find, the more love there will be to find, so never look in just one place or for just one type.

Know what's great about all three methods? You don't need any help convincing or teaching your husband to become easier to love. You can just let him be himself and turn it all around. For me, it took the death of my first husband to discover this. I want you to discover it before it's too late. Make your husband easier to love this week and let me know how it goes.

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Asian Bride's wedding dress

In an Asian community, especially in our subcontinent wedding is the most special and memorable day in a woman’s life. Teenage girls start dreaming about their wedding as soon as they get into their marriage age. They want to look out of this world and remembered by everyone all their lives. The most important thing is their wedding dress which is the BRIDAL DRESS of a bride.

Bridal dress of a woman makes her look different from others. Women around the world has become very fashion conscious. They have started to feel the importance of fashion designers. Designers who are expertise at bridal fashion. They choose designers rather than getting into the hassel of choosing the cloth, colour combination, embroidery and stitching.These fashion designers not only help them look good but also be remembered. Bridal dresses are of different types like gharara, sharara, lehanga choli and mermaid cut lehanga etc. Woman usually selects the type according to the fashion trends.

The embroidery and motifs being used make the wedding dress gorgeous and beautiful. These include dabka, tilla, sequins; bead work; Kora, naqshi, cut-glass and other various ornamental works. To make it really look of this world some woman use Swarovski crystals along with real gold threads just to make it PRINCESS DRESS. These ornaments add up elegance and beautify the bridal dress.

In this fast pace of time, woman want the best on her wedding day and she being the bride is the most important aspect of the day. Bridal dresses available are of different costs. One can choose according to their budget.

Indian Wedding Dresses and weddings are well known all over the world. The traditional outfits and ceremonies are part of our society and ethics. Bridal dresses are complimented by the beautiful jewellery worn by the bride. The jewellery is also selected according to the colour combination of the dress. Jewellery designers are also available to design all sorts of jewellery according to the dress type.

The advancement in Indian fashion industry has brought about awareness among the people and they have become conscious in their wearing trends. Special dresses on special occasions have become important for all classes of people. In the same way, wedding day and the bridal dress has become a status symbol for people.

BIG FAT INDIAN WEDDING

Different wedding traditions in India have very many similarities too, despite linguistic and cultural differences that exist. This is not surprising if you look at the way the Indian wedding customs evolved over centuries and their significance to the new couples’ life ahead. In fact, the traditions are centered on showcasing individualities of different groups.

Cards

They say if marriages are made in heaven, wedding cards make them known. What better way to make them known than sending out beautifully crafted wedding cards? But think of this, when it’s you that has to choose a wedding card design, you will know how hard it really is even if budget isn’t a constraint. So it is curtains for the good old postcard style of wedding cards.

Take a brief look at the varieties of India wedding cards you can just pickup off the shelf. Wedding cards are usually foldable even in their simplest forms, these days and your choice begins here. The off white art paper used for making these have slight silvery shade overall with a raised image of Lord Ganpati on front top. You will see lots of floral or traditional patterns for borders either embossed or printed almost always in golden color. However, if the paper is in magenta or maroon, the only color that matches is golden, definitely not silver.

Recent trend is to have wedding cards in flip top style but here there is no choice of particular color and anything goes as long as it matches with your overall wedding theme. However, bright colors don’t go well with flip tops and more so when you choose to have silver threads to wrap them.

Scroll wedding cards, made authentically to the historic style are the current rage. Here the thing you need to lookout for is the choice of cloth and its color. And choose the one with a wrapping thread; say for example crimson red thread in case of leafy green scroll fabric. You can order scroll borders to have zari laces or nothing at all.

Hand painted and hand made wedding cards are quite popular but they not just cost you more but also take quite some time to make in big numbers. But, it is here, alongside gold and silver wedding cards that you get full control over their looks and feels. Your freedom with hand made wedding cards never ends with choosing just one design as you can have each card made differently; the choice of paper & color, sizes, calligraphic fonts and what not? You can also draw ideas from scrapbooks, have little things stuck on the front, little mirrors and the similar things.

India wedding cards don’t have distinct designs or customs for different religious affiliations, if card makers show Sikh or Muslim wedding cards, for example, just ask them whether you can have a similar design for Christian cards and see how he replies.

Pre-Wedding Ceremonies

If you did not know already, here it is- Indian weddings used to be a week long celebrations which only ended after seeing off of the groom’s party with the bride. While, bidaai (seeing off) is the only thing left out after the wedding it is the pre-wedding ceremonies that really are spell binding to everyone.

Much of the traditional pre wedding practices remain only as ceremonial customs today, however, three prominent of them are still in full practice in Indian and Pakistani weddings. Since pre-wedding ceremonies mark the beginning, they are held by both the parties at their respective places.

Sangeet, an event that heralds the beginning of wedding, is actually a fun filled music session. The family members assemble and sing and dance to the tunes of rather amateurish musician members of the family. Often sangeet (Indian for music) ceremony breaks out into undeclared competitions within the family members and the loosing side is often made to pay the wishes of the winning side. Naturally, the competing groups are male and female groups.

The next important pre wedding ceremony is Haldi (turmeric paste). The term may sound odd to new ears but definitely not after watching the ceremony unfold. Bride and groom are completely washed with turmeric paste following a rather ceremonial rubbing off of turmeric by their respective family members and relatives on their hands (palms in some families.) But what does it signify, after all, is the total cleansing of bodies as turmeric is said to have antiseptic qualities in addition to leaving a brightly glowing skin after a bath. So, what better way to begin your romantic journey than having a confident, glowing skin?






Mehndi (henna paste), also called as mehendi, is used to decorate the bride however, it is not uncommon for grooms to have mehndi. Mehndi artists or trained relatives draw intricate designs or floral patterns over their arms with palms receiving the maximum attention. If designs are on one side, the brides may want to have their grooms’ name pasted but hidden cleverly within the patterns on the other. Mehndi takes almost a full day to completely dry out so as to render its full resplendent color which only means they need their maids of honor and best men for everything round the clock by their sides.

In a way, you can say these aren’t just pre wedding ceremonies but beginnings of weddings. Baraat, (march of grooms’ party to the wedding venue) may be said to be the last pre wedding ceremony or the beginning of actual wedding in India.

Sari Dresses

Ask an Indian bride or her Maid of Honor how easy or hard it is to choose wedding saris and most certainly they would tell you it is the toughest part of wedding preparation for a bride’s party. Is it really so? We will see in this article.

Customarily, an Indian bride receives six saris in all, each of them designated to be worn on particular occasion that demands a certain protocol; and out of which five will be from the groom’s parents and the other one from her parents. If this is confusing enough, read further.

The first sari that the bride wears is the one presented to her by her parents at the first leg of the wedding whose rituals run till kanyadaan. This is because; it is assumed that till kanyadaan the bride still belongs to her family of origin and so the protocol. Immediately following kanyadaan, groom’s parents present her a set of five saris to symbolize the gesture they make her to welcome into their family. The top of the five should be worn immediately and till the end of all the rituals. The third sari is worn by the bride on the wedding evening or reception party hosted by the groom or his parents.

Now let’s simplify things a little further; all these saris are more or less based on red color or its shades although other brighter colors such as deep yellow or darker greens aren’t discouraged. The preference for red or any bright color is not customary but basically because of their beauty. The first three of the six saris are for wearing on the day of wedding, so they got to be of top design and value with attaching highest importance to the second one. What follows next is the choice of border and pallu colors besides choosing the patterns of zari embroidery. Normally Zari will be in silver and depending on individual budget you can have gold embroidered saris. Where and what pattern you need for zari is for individuals to decide. There is another kind of exquisite saris called Pitambara which is not so popular these days because of their bulkiness. Pitambaras are completely made from gold without the touch of silk or any other fabric. However, the first and the third saris can be lesser to the second one in comparison.

The last three saris are for wearing on subsequent days to temple and other closing functions. Obviously, the choice depends on your budget and thorough knowledge of protocols.

Customs

All weddings set forth tiny institutions regardless of cultural grounds on which they are done. When it is Indian wedding, the emphasis is more on upholding this aspect and all else, it is believed, will fall into place.

The customs on which Indian weddings are held bind the new couples to commit for each others’ well being, in every aspect of life, till death does them apart. It is really interesting to know how this works and what place the love enjoys in a wedlock.

The Indian wedding customs begin with Kanyadaan in a majority of cases, but for Brahmins and Kshatriyas it is Upanayana, preceding kanyadaan, which marks the beginning. Upanayana is a custom to recognize the attainment of manhood (read maturity) and that the man is ready for higher responsibilities for example running a family.

Well, Indian wedding customs stand on two principles which begin with the groom accepting the bride as his equal partner for life and for all aspects. The oath ‘Dharmecha, arthecha, kaamecha’ by the groom promises to the bride that he will see her as an alter ego (saha dharmini) in his ‘Duties, Professions and Pleasures.’ The groom takes this oath immediately following a sequence of rituals leading to ‘kanyadaan’ – acceptance by the bride’s parents for the marriage. Even though acceptance on the day of wedding appears ceremonial, it is customary before solemnization. Kanyadaan also signifies that the bride no more belongs to her parents’ family.

What follows kanyadaan is exchange of garlands between the couple and tying up of nuptial knot (mangal sutra) by the groom. Mangal sutra is a gold necklace studded with black beads of semiprecious stones and one or two traditionally designed pendants. It is this mangal sutra that ensembles a married woman in India and married women will never remove it for any reason as long as their husbands are alive. For a bride, wearing mangal sutra is a matter of pride and promise of protection made to her by her groom.

The final solemnization custom is through what is known as sapta-padi which plainly means seven-steps and it stands symbolically for all the steps the new couple takes jointly in their new life ahead. The seven steps are taken by the couple by going round a holy fire which again symbolizes that the couple had vowed by the fire to stay together till death.

Different Indian religious groups, not excluding Muslims and Christians, may have slight differences but all Indian wedding customs are built around this.

Summary

To get a better insight of India wedding traditions, it is necessary to understand the core wedding customs first. By customs, Indian wedding signifies an important event for the groom’s family which assumes the lawful parenthood of the bride, meaning that, she becomes a member of their family in entirety but more specifically for three critical aspects of that family. Thus the bride becomes an equal partner in groom’s familial responsibilities (Dharma), profession and properties (Artha) and personal pleasures (Kaama.) Given this background, it is the responsibility of brides’ parties to host the wedding party and the reception is hosted by the grooms’ parents as a way of thanking the other parties.