SoCal Wedding Day

These first two images give you an idea of the 2 and a half hours of Bridal preparations which began at Malibu temple at 7:30 am Saturday June 28. Aruna did everything for face, and hair extension.

















Sreedhar´s sister-in-law Rekha and two friends did the amazing floral arrangement in the traditional Telugu long braid. I didn´t want to take it apart when all was over, so saved the extension with the flowers, perhaps to dry and keep as a memento.














After the ceremony, photos, lunch, walks around the Malibu temple to pay respects to the Hindu deities there, more photos, we decided to head to the beach to soak in the sunshine and bask in the natural forces surrounding us on our special day.











Rewinding to the beginning of the ceremony, which started with a Ganesh puja to bless the groom and remove all obstacles. Here is a gorgeous shot of Sree surrounded by his entire family. Shortly after the conclusion of the puja, the actual wedding ceremony began.










Here is Jilakara-Bellam, or a traditional Andhra custom using cumin and jaggery.

We have tons more photos of the rice we got to pour all over each other, taking our steps by the fire, tying the knots on the Mangal Sutra, competing for the ring dropped in a large bowl of liquid to see who would dominate our marriage - yep, you guessed it.
Right now we´re in Costa Rica with slow download speeds and will send a complete photo album out when we get back to SF. Love to you... xoxoxox Kiran y Sreedhar

SoCal Wedding - Nalugu

Here, I'm being fed by my Mom, Connie, after 3 and a half hours with Sailu´s beautician Aruna and her niece, who designed and completed the henna at Aruna's salon. The Mehendi design resembled peacocks with their plumes opened along with lots of interesting adornments. I slept with the Mehendi under rubber doctor gloves from Sailu's sister-in-law Rekha. Sleeping with Mehendi drying was a bit challenging but it paid off as the next morning, all the women in the family were impressed at its darkness. Aruna said that in some parts of India, the wives tale about Mehendi's darkness is the darker it gets, the deeper the groom's love for the bride. In other parts of the country, the Mehendi's darkness signifies the depth of the mother-in-law's love for the bride...

First thing Friday morning, Sreedhar and I sat and prepared for Nalugu, which is a ceremony which takes place the day before the wedding when both Bride and Groom receive blessings from their elders. Sree´s 10 year old nephew Vijay very excitedly *eh hem* sat with him during this part of the ceremonies as his companion. So whatever we got smeared on us, he was along for the ride. Here Sree´s sister-in- law Durga and sister Sailu´s close friend Lavanya are giving us our blessings while Nimish is snapping away the pics as he did for the entire weekend.




Durga is one of those classically elegant Indian women who knows exactly how to tie a sari, set one´s makeup and pull all of the jewelry pieces together perfectly so you feel like you´re walking off the fashion pages or a movie set. Here, she is applying a traditional hand painted South Indian Bindhi with a toothpick and a small bottle of candy apple red paint right before we made our entrance for the post haldi Bridal shower blessings, all showered up and beautified.




The women of Sreedhar´s family and sister´s community hold a silver plate filled with flowers, pastes, candles, to give us their blessings. Notice the outfits we have on... Sailu shopped in India last March for us and most of her community members and did an excellent job of making sure we all looked super snazzy for the occasion.







Anita and Lawrence also got decked out in beautiful Indian clothes for all of the events. At this point in the weekend´s events, Sree and I had mastered our facial yoga exercises as we literally had sore cheeks from perma-grinning for non stop photo ops with every single group of family and friends you could imagine, an experience that my Princess side soaked up like a sponge.