Congratulations to you both! It looks like you all had a wonderful time, but you must be worn out. Your husband is handsome, what’s his name? In the ‘first dance’ pictures, it looks like you’re wearing blue or purple, is that the pink under blue lights?
Would you want to do everything for your daughter that your folks did for you and your sister from a continent away? 
Thank you for sharing all this w/ us, may you have many happy, healthy years together!
OMG you are so gorgeous and glamorous, just breathtaking. Wow!
Oh, and congratulations!! 
You looked beautiful! Indian weddings are awesome.
Congratulations, anu-la1979!
A few questions:
- How long do the henna tattoos last? Do they simply wash off?
- Is there some kind of ritual for when and how they’re applied?
- How long does the application take?
- On what parts of the body are they applied and what is the significance?
Pretty sure that’s kind of the point. 
You look incredible and happy. Glad it was a beautiful wedding. How was the honeymoon?
Thoes are really lovely pictures!! Conga - rats!
Thank you all for the good wishes and congratulations! They mean a lot
Nawth Chucka:
His name is Ash and I’m Anu.
That outfit was insane! The tailor in the US ruined the blouse piece for the pink saree my parents bought me (made it for someone 50 lbs heavier and 2 feet taller I think-it had someone else’s name pinned to it) so I had to buy an outfit in India the day that I landed. I ended up opting for a net lehenga in a fishtail cut. It’s royal blue net with (an insane number of) white crystals and red velvet accents. The lights shining down on us are white.
I felt a LITTLE like an American flag, although the only person who pointed that out/made a patriotism crack was my younger sister, who has the same sense of humour that I do.
Hmm, so my parents live in the US (Boston) and raised me and my sister almost entirely in the US and Canada. My dad was on long-term assignments in England and Japan, so we lived there a few times, but we are solidly North American. My parents arranged the wedding in India because of my husband’s side of the family. He was raised there and only came to the US for his masters. We would…not do that again had we known it would be such a PITA and the dramz would explode at the last minute. So I’m not inclined to want my kids to get married in India AT ALL, frankly.
I would pay for my child’s wedding and help them arrange it if they wanted, but my priorities are actually paying for their education as opposed to their wedding. Anyway, don’t know if my kids will end up marrying anyone Indian, although I would strongly, strongly, strongly prefer they marry someone Hindu. I’ll take a convert or a non-Indian who loves Indian culture 
Onomatopoeia
Some of mine are still on my hands and feet and it’s been over 3 weeks since I had them done. It’s like an herbal stain/dye, so it fades slowly over time as you wash your hands and stuff, but your skin is actually pigmented with it for a while. The lighter you are, and the longer you leave it on, the more it will “stain” your skin.
Henna is known as “mehndi” and the event at which it’s applied is called the mehndi. It’s a bit of a bachelorette party for all the women guests. The bride is applied with mehndi, traditionally the women sing and dance old-school folk songs and everyone gets some mehndi done.
My application took the longest because I got bridal mehndi, but much much much less than it would have had I gotten a Hindu design. My mom actually convinced me to get a more delicate Arabic/Muslim design because she thinks the heavy Hindu ones are ugly. LOL. I would say it took about 2.5-3 hours to apply and then I dried it for an additional 5. I did not keep it on overnight because the sangeet was on the same day (it’s like a whole 'nother wedding thingy) and I did not want to go to the sangeet with the mehndi on, though plenty of brides do. But basically you have to scrape it off, and then let it darken on the skin again for about 5 hours-you can’t wash it off with soap. Since I had to get up at 5 in the morning the next day to shower and whatnot, I couldn’t leave it on overnight, though it darkened up plenty.
It’s applied to the hands (both sides) and the feet and legs. My went up a bit up my calves and then front and back of hands and arms but below the elbows. The heavier Gujarati/Rajasthani Hindu designs will take it all the way up to the knees and armpits.
Thank you! We had a mini-moon in Uttarakhand, a Himalayan state for about 3 days but our real honeymoon will be in Peru later this year. India was absolutely AMAZING though. I will put up some pictures soon-we travelled through Mumbai, Goa, Delhi, Lucknow, Kanpur and Ramgarh (Uttarakhand, about 90 minutes from Nainital).
Unfortunately, we did not get to enjoy Goa in the least due to the wedding. But I did get to smugface it all over Goa to my husband, as I speak the native language of Konkani (my parents are both Saraswats…the Brahmins of Goa) and he does not (he’s Bihari).
Congratulations! You look lovely (and so does your husband, in a masculine way of course). It’s a good thing you had such an exhausting wedding - you’re not supposed to feel like you could ever do it again!
You looked like a princess with her prince!
DAMN you’re gorgeous!!! Congrats!!
You both looked like you were glowing - what a lovely couple, and what a joyous occasion!
Congratulations to both of you!
You are stunning! Congratulations.
Congratulations! I loved the pictures - my daughter and I saw them together, and it was a nice opportunity for her to learn a little about Indian weddings, since she loves weddings and wedding dresses. When she saw the ceremony picture, she said, “So that’s what they mean when they say ‘tying the knot’!” I thought that was so cute.
We wish you many years of happiness!
I love the picture that you titled “gaiety” - absolutely true! I know my face hurt after my wedding day from all the smiling, and I’d bet that yours did too. Congratulations, and I hope your life together is filled with those kinds of smiles.
Wow, those pictures are amazing - I’m super jealous that I didn’t get to wear a nose ring chained to my earring at my wedding! Just absolutely beautiful! (It’s funny how you look so different once they put all the wedding slap on you, in both cultures!)
Thank you! So did you end up going with your vintage dress or the more modern one? I never saw an update after that and was wondering!
OMG, the makeup. I can’t even. I feel like it looks good in the photographs now that I’m looking at them but I felt insane with it on my face and because she was running late and my husband’s baraat had arrived I literally ran from my room to the wedding (except for a slight detour, detailed below). So I got one look at myself in the mirror, had a WTF shock and then got to go to my wedding.
iftheresaway: actually, I hate smiling on demand and I felt so nuts in my wedding getup that I think I am smiling uncomfortably in a lot of photographs.
Favorite Wedding Memory Other than Getting Married:
Our wedding was held at a really really nice, “foreign tourist” oriented resort in Goa. To get from my room to the ballroom, where my husband was waiting for me, I had to walk through the lobby. Soooo, my husband’s baraat (processional) gets to the wedding and they start the wedding, do the religious greet and escort him to the mandap (Hindu chuppah). Then they call for me, as I am the last person to come in for the Marathi wedding.
Welllll, as I’m walking through the lobby to the ballroom with my sister (my karoli, kind of an MOH), a Japanese tour group spots me in my Kali the Avenger outfit and goes nuts. Like quite literally. They jump in front of me and are like “OMG please please please, can you take a picture?” And then all of a sudden my sister and I are posing and re-posing for dozens of tourists who are super eager to take photographs with us and refuse to let us go. They ask me to look “extra Indian” so I play along and do a namaste pose, which was a huge mistake because all of a sudden there are more demands for reshoots because everyone wants a namaste pose. Finally at the wedding I guess my dad is like “where the hell is she” and sneaks out to find me…and is like “guys, you have to let her go…she’s supposed to be getting married RIGHT NOW.” So anyway, I do one final groupshot and am relinquished by the tour group to go ahead and get married.
It was so…surreal. And I am like tickled because I know I am all over a bunch of Japanese facebooks right now.
Wouldn’t that be hilarious if you could find yourself there? YouTube maybe?
Wow, I love the nosering! And the henna! So glamorous, like something out of a movie.
I went with the modern dress but took pictures with my grandmother’s dress as well. I put it up to a vote and everybody voted modern, which I suppose is fine - however, after a whole day of doing bridal photos in my modern dress putting on my grandma’s dress, which had seemed restrictive before, was a breath of fresh air! I was a little afraid I’d pop a seam if I sat down in it, though!
Hope it doesn’t steal your thunder (well, there’s no way it could - seriously, you can’t top an Indian bride in full regalia!) but here’s a few pictures - Grandma’s dress, modern dress, and my favorite bitchface picture. “Those motherfucking napkins had better be ivory this time! I will take a finger for each off-white napkin! And nobody tell me to smile!”
I can’t really get over the makeup thing, either. I almost never wear it IRL and it was like another weird part of the crazy costume.