Pre-wedding Planning for an Indian wedding
Wedding Planning
Similar to most South Asian couples, we started discussing our wedding with our families and each other before we were engaged. We knew we were going to start planning our wedding in the next few months, so we asked my mother to start looking at “good” wedding dates. My wedding planning checklist had a few pre planning items that we needed to discuss first. The date was number one on my Indian wedding checklist. Some of you may have to go through this at different levels. Some parents look to make sure that all the dates of the wedding events are auspicious, some look for just the date of the first puja and others look at the wedding date itself. Speak to both of your parents about what they are looking for and who’s pandit will have the final say. Trying to find a good date that is on a Saturday in the summer months is not always easy. It took us several weeks going back and forth with pandits in India. “The calendar isn’t out yet, I have go to the city to get the calendar, there is no rush you have time,” are the comments we received when making these calls. For others, they may plan their wedding in 6 months because of dates and some couples get 18 months. Then there are also couples, who have a court marriage on the “good” date and plan their wedding with ease 8 months later.
We were initially looking for a fall 2012 wedding date, but that didn’t work out as there was only 1 Saturday that worked in the whole season. That one Saturday didn’t work with our schedules L so we had to look at 2013. Once we had our dates, we looked at the calendar and compared it to our work schedules and figured out what made the most sense for both of us.
While we were waiting to hear about what dates worked, we started discussing what events we wanted to have and how we wanted to spread them out over 3 days. We discussed events and where my events would be and what events he would have. I wanted the full Gujarati wedding complete with a garba night which my parents were a fan of :).
Another conversation we started in the pre-wedding planning discussions was which family was going to be responsible for what events. What is the overall wedding budget and who is contributing to it? It will make it easier in the wedding planning process if the Bride’s family and Groom’s family allocate responsibilities. What were your initial discussions with your families? What was first on your wedding planning checklist?
Ready for the next steps in planning your wedding. See our wedding planning timeline for 12-9 months out.