Hello hello!
So, I’m now in the home stretch of this wedding planning business (feels surreal!) and this past weekend was also full of preparations!
After we finally got our marriage license on Friday (see previous post!), my mom and I hit up Gerrard Street Little India Bazaar to go shopping for supplies we needed to package susraali (in-laws) gifts and to find my mom clothes she’s going to wear on the wedding! (Yes – my mom still doesn’t have all her clothes! Grrr)
After a successful morning finding the perfect packaging supplies we also managed to find material for her to make a suit for the shaadi – it’s off white and red, which I’m really happy about because my mom, brother and sister all coordinate with my red dress, and well, it’s not like I did that on purpose or anything….haha of course I did, think about the pictures!! My own family can’t clash with me in the pictures! (P.S. I’m a perfectionist control freak? Lol)
So after Gerrard Street, my mom had been wanting to check out the stores at Albion and Islington in Toronto – particularly Kohinoor. We weren’t impressed. I mean, I’m well aware that Albion Road doesn’t have the…classiest reputation, lol, but c’mon neither does Gerrard Street, and I’ve managed to find some diamonds in the rough there! So we checked it out, both Kohinoor and its sister store Kohinoor Haute Couture, and well to be quite honest nothing was ‘haute’ about it! Everything there was so flashy, lots of bling, gaudy designs… I didn’t see anything elegant with fine “kaam.” I mean, we also had the same problem in Lahore, because this seems to be the new style, but at least when you’re in the PK, you have the opportunity to search until you find the unique pieces you’re looking for. The other issue was that most of the ready to wear clothes come in small or medium, which usually doesn’t work for mommas! Needless to say, we found nothing at either of the Kohinoor Stores!
When we got home that evening my sister and I got straight to work on gift wrapping the susraali gifts – I can’t show you how we did them til after the wedding – but we took over as much of my mom’s bedroom as we could: (yes that’s a samsonite suit case lol – Pakistanis love samsonite!)
The next day we roamed around the mall in London, ON looking for a luggage set for me (I desperately need a luggage set! Where can I get a nice one?!) and although we didn’t find that, we got fun LED lights from the dollar store for my mehndi trays (our mehndi venue won’t allow open flame – you’ll see why soon!)
So that was my weekend of wedding prep!
mybigfatpakistani 