We are Engaged! Part II

A few photos are up from the engagement party in Our Photos. Many of the photos from our digital camera had red-eye, so I have to use this photo software to remove it. So look out for more photos hopefully later today!!!

What an absolutely wonderful day on Saturday! Neeraj and I wish it could have lasted longer — like a week long celebration!! But we will enjoy during the wedding!

Where should I begin? Festivities begin to pick up speed on Wednesday of last week as I had the day off, so Neeraj and I ran our very important errands, made any final adjustments to the guest list, and began to think about what to use for decorations. Thursday was Thanksgiviing so we spent the day with Bhayia and Mumma, getting the house cleaned, completing the Nonstop Dance Music, which was a major hit :grin:, and answering phone calls.

Family started to pour in on Friday. My cousins came that evening as well as Neeraj’s friends. Once the cousins reached we all went over to the banquet hall to start decorating. Neeraj told his friends to meet us there as they were driving straight from Chicago Midway Airport.

It was a great time decorating!! The hall looked so amazing! I was very happy with it. Neeraj and his engineers (his friends ) worked on decorating the lights/ceiling with streamers. It was perfectly symmetrical on both sides of the hall — absolutely wonderful!

My cousins and I worked on the walls — decorating it with lights and then putting our oh-so beautfiul saris on the lights so that it reflects the colors.

We left pretty late that night, only to reach home and stay up till about 4 am with four of my cousins as we played a board game, Life.

I hardly got any sleep that night and then boom! It was Saturday morning. I received an unexpected 8 am wake-up call by Kaush dear who wanted to wish us on our special day. Even though you weren’t able to come, thank you for thinking of us on our day!

The rest of my cousins, chachas, chachis, buas, and jijajis came Saturday morning. So much was giong on — food was being prepared, people running from here to there, laughter all over the place — it was heaven! i just looked at everything that was going on my home and had this very positive feeling that ran up my spine as I slowly began to realized that today I was getting engaged to my dear love. A feeling that I will never forget for the rest of my life. Could life been even more perfect?

I called Neeraj late morning to see if him and his friends had woken up yet. We invited them to my home for lunch as I knew that they wouldn’t have had anything to eat. His friends got to meet the rest of my family, enjoy a good meal, play some TT, and then headed out to the bus station to pick up one other friend that was coming from NY.

There was so much still left to do — Neeraj had no idea what he was going to say in his speech, we needed to get the intro music all settled, pick up the balloon bouquets/confetti, and he had bought a new watch that he needed to pick up. Neeraj and his friends were off to the races after leaving our house to do all of the above and to pick up his friend from the station.

Don’t know how the time passed but soon enough it was 4 pm (party started at 6). I slowly began to get ready with the help of my dear cousin and bhabhi, we were able to curl my hair and get it all set. Then was the makeup, and then finally the dress. Do you know that I was the first one to get all dressed and ready in the family? I was ready to go by 4.45-5 ish. Neeraj didn’t reach his home until around that time, and then was looking all so handsome when he reached my house at 5.30 (we were going to go to the hall together ).

Bhayia had left the house early, and I handed him my laptop so that he can start gettnig that setup with the DJ equipment. Lo behold that when I entered the kitchen after getting dressed, I noticed that my laptop was sitting on the chair. Now I was getting nervous.

More than half of the family wasn’t ready by 5.30, and I was beginning to get anxious to get to the hall, which was going to be a 15 min drive from my home.

We got to the hall — late and began to notice the little snafus. The first one that we noticed was the signs to the hall were wrong — we wanted our guests to enter from the front door, not the back door. I found the banquet manager and told him to fix that ASAP. As we entered the hall, many of our American guests (my friends) were already there. Wow, were they on time:!: My parents reached the hall about 10 mins after Neeraj and me.

This was just the beginning. Next post (tomorrow) will have more photos and details so stay tuned!!!!

Alvida. Jai Mata Di.