The Wedding – Part 1

I have broken this blog down into two as it was rather long. This is part one – shopping!

On Monday the NEEDS staff were invited to the wedding of our colleagues daughter. As I commented to Evelyn, ‘apparently weddings in India are a must do, so we must do it!’

On hearing this exciting news Evelyn and I asked around  to get some advice on what we should wear. I was hankering after a sari but my colleagues warned me they are difficult to wear and I would more than likely fall over (I think they know me better than I give them credit for!) So we decided to go and buy some new suits or salwar kameez  for the wedding.

On Tuesday we went up to Tower Chowk Market (chowk means cross roads, it is not a mis-spelling) to go and buy our new suits and Evelyn had been told from one of the ladies in the office that there was a good shop called Miss India, however the details on the location of the shop were a little vague shall we say. So we arrive at the first shop not really knowing what we wanted but we thought we would have a look around and then ask around for the Miss India shop.

Indian suit shopping is, yet again, an experience.  As none of the suits are hanging up you have to have sales assistant with you in order to view anything, you are told to sit down (on hindsight sitting is required otherwise your brain would short out and you might get blood on their lovely suits when you hit the deck) whilst reams and reams of material are literally thrown at you with comments such as:  ‘this would look good’, ‘this colour will suit you mam’, ‘good material, 110% cotton!’. Which is great, apart from Evelyn and I have very different tastes in suits. I like dark coloured suits with a bit of bling and Evelyn likes light coloured suits which are very plain. Confusing for all concerned I think you’ll agree.

So Evelyn and I visited a great number of shops on the hunt for Miss India with the same process being repeated at each and every shop, and we must have viewed at least 20 different types of suits at each place, each one not being quite right.

We did eventually find Miss India and they only had candle light – at 9:00 p.m. so it was not much good at all us being there. We also got kicked out of the last shop at 9:30 when I had rejected everything they had thrown at me and was beginning to look nothing less than sulky and Evelyn was on the brink of buying something but needed more time to think about it.

Cut to two women sat in the back of a rickshaw looking slightly shell-shocked, dare I say it, a little bit dribbley. Both of our brains had given up the ghost and all of the materials had merged into one great lump of multi coloured, sequined, embroidered mass, in which your mind can’t sort out and you forget which ones you saw that you liked, where they were or even being 100% sure of the colour. The biggest joke of all is you thinking that perhaps the fluorescent pink with contrasting yellow trousers could indeed be the look you were going for.

As we had both returned home empty handed we went into the breach yet again, on Thursday, as the malaria tablets gave me a funny turn on Wednesday (well something did – the tablets are the easiest thing to blame). I had my heart set on the silk salwar kameez I had seen in red and pale gold, I ended up with purple and pale gold but hey its close enough. Evelyn settled on the one she had seen in the first shop we had visited on day one of the escapade.

We now have a suit each – hurrah! Now for the fitting… you take your precious suit to a tailor or the tailor comes to you and you specify what you would like to have done. So a bit stitched down the sides so it doesn’t look quite as sack like, the seams down the side extending and the arm holes increasing in my case. Easy enough, apart from the fact that they unpicked the sides rather than sewing them up, it was easily rectified. Evelyn needed about 2 foot from each side of the garment taken in and the arm holes reducing – great, jobs done in 30 minutes. Only the tailor took the arm hole reduction a little too far and she couldn’t even get into it. Again it was easily rectified with a zip, unfortunately it wasn’t going to be ready until… Saturday!

All in all the shopping trips must have taken 6 hours or so which in the grand scheme of wedding outfit shopping isn’t bad really. Now to attend the wedding…