Reminiscence of the wedding

We are on our way to San Diego to see my sister and my brother-in-law. In 36 hours we will be on our way to Fiji. Gin and I can't wait to relax on the beach and just enjoy not doing anything.

The wedding and the reception was amazing. We thought it was the best wedding we had been to, but obviously we're a little biased. Honestly, some people did say that it was the best wedding they had been to. I was really happy to hear that.

The day before the wedding, my brother-in-law (Kaushal) and Nikhil went to Abhishek Decorators to pick up the Mandap, chair covers, overlays, garlands, etc for decoration. I can't thank them enough for doing that because without their help this wedding wouldn't have looked that beautiful. Anyhow the night before the wedding, my sister (Dharti), put henna on Gin's hands and feet. It came out beautiful. While Dharti was putting Henna on Gin, pappa (my dad), dad (Gin's dad), Nikhil, Kaushal, my brother Rajen, and I were setting up the Mandap. It took us about an hour to set everything up and it was beautiful. The Mandap was the perfect size and didn't need too much decoration because it was simply beautiful (you can see it from the pictures). All of us were hanging out after the mandap was setup. It was awesome. Dharti, Gin, Nikhil, Kaushal, and I were awake until almost 3am. We were just having so much fun. Mrs. Hamilton, mom's friend (Gin's mom) and Mary (Gin's sister) hungout with us for a while before they went to bed. It was fun feeding Gin because she had Henna all over her hands. Of course, I fed myself more than I fed her :)

The day of the wedding we woke up late because we went to bed late the night before. I thought everything was done and I had so much time that I was calling to cancel my cellphone service and doing other nonsense things until I realized I had no time to get ready. Then I started running around crazy like chicken with no head. Surprisingly, the wedding ceremony only started about 10 minutes late. The pundit (priest), Kaushik Shastry started the ceremony with welcoming me to the Mandap. The ceremony was utterly beautiful because the pundit explained everything along the way. Most of us didn't speak Sanskrit (ancient language of India like Latin) and since all the verses were in Sanskrit, they needed to be translated. The pundit did such an incredible job and an hour and fourty minutes passed and I didn't even realize it. Surprisingly, most of the people felt the same way and they also thought that it was just a beautiful ceremony. Honestly, I didn't know much of the things in the ceremony until the pundit explained everything, the real meaning behind the verses. I have been to a lot of Indian weddings before, but the pundits never explained anything about the ceremony, simply recite the verses in Sanskrit and that's it. No wonder why people in India can never sit through an hour and half long ceremony because they have no idea what is going on (well at least most of the people don't).

After the ceremony, the DJ came up to me to ask me where he was going to setup his equipment and I told him I had no idea. At some point you have to let go and hope for the best. Gin and I did exactly that. I told someone to take care of it. Anyhow, I was nervous about the how the arrangement was going to be.

After Gin and I changed our clothes from the wedding ceremony and went to the reception, I was shocked at how transformed the place looked (in an excellent way). Aparently, while we were changing, Kaushal and Nikhil single-handedly dismantled the Mandap to make room for the dance floor and the entire room looked transformed. Gin and I were thoroughly pleased with the way the arrangement looked.

After we had a grand entrance in the reception, dad and Rajen gave excellent speeches. Their words meant a lot to both Gin and I. The food was buffet style so peole started going up to the buffet area and we had one table after another get the food. Gin and I were starving considering we hadn't eaten much the entire day. After a few minutes we couldn't wait any longer and we got food. The food was delicious. I think I went up 3 times and I still wanted more. I think Gin was quite embarrased by that time because she had stopped eating after our first round. Soon after we had the cake cutting ceremony. Thanks to Chris Naselli (Gin's hair stylist) and Joseph Ortiz (Chris's boyfriend), we had the cheesecake as our wedding cake from Junior's Brooklyn. You can't go wrong with Junior's cheesecake and it lived upto it's reputation. We enjoyed it very much.

After some time the DJ opened up the dance floor and everyone started getting into the music. We had all kinds of music. We had Desi (Indian) and American music. All of us had an awesome time at the dance floor. Gin and I danced all the way until the end. Somewhere along the way we forgot to eat our wedding cake, wait they never brought it to our table :). I was so happy to see pappa & mummy (my mom) dance. I've never seen my mom dance and her dancing all night was very special to me. Matter of fact she request some music of her own.

Before the reception had started, I had mentioned to Gin about cleaning up our room because we wouldn't want to deal with it at the end of the night. To our surprise, Molly, Shae, and Spencer got into our room before we did and put flowers in our jacuzzi bathtub. They also put garlands on our bed (the same garlands that Gin and I had exchanged in the ceremony). They also put votive candles around the entire jazucci and cleaned up our room. It was very speical. Gin and I absolutely loved it. What happened after that is TMI :)

The following morning Gin and I woke up early and got ready for the brunch with friends and family. It was nice to see everyone before they went back to their destinations. We had a long day ahead of us with packing all our stuff and getting organized for the trip.

After we said good bye to my brother and his family, we went go-karting with Mary and Joe (Gin's nephew). It was my first time go-karting and we had a lot of fun. Mary and Joe went back up to Soho and we returned back to the hotel. Later in the evening we went out for dinner with Gin's family to a Thai restaurant. Surprisingly, good thai food for a suburb.

On monday Nikhil and I went up to the decorators to return all the decorating stuff we had gotten and Nikhil went catch his flight back to Wisconsin. Unfortunately, his flight got canceled and had to miss another day of work without compensation and had to pay for staying an addition night because the next flight out was tuesday morning. I will miss him very much. He is like a brother to me.

I cannot believe that I am here sitting in the airplane right now on my way to San Diego and we're leaving everything behind. It isn't easy doing that, but Gin and I think if we don't do it now, then it wouldn't happen later in the future. We are very thankful and thanking isn't even enough to say how much our family and friends did this weekend to make our wedding and reception unforgetable for us and for other people. To sum it up in a nutshell, I am going to quote my brother "events like this don't mean anything if you cannot share it with friends and family." Love you guys and I will miss you.