Moving Forward

As you may have noticed, I have changed the name of the blog to All Things Spice. It's my Twitter username and I think is much more reflective of me. You can find LOADS of blogs that talk about wedding and lifestyle pretty  but I have no interest whatsoever in competing with them. To me, they represent the more 'sugar coated' aspects of life. There are some gorgeous photographs on those blogs of weddings that look like illustrations from a fairytale. I remember seeing a version of Cinderella though, long ago where the first scene was the wedding between the Prince and Cinderella, with 'and they lived happily ever after...' and then the play moved on as they actually, you know... show how they, as two people who barely knew each other, could get used to being married to each other and therefore live happily ever after... To me, that's more of what I want to come across in my blogging. Mr Sugar Spice and I may have grown up in the same country, but we have two different cultures (though we did know each other a little longer than dancing at a ball together). I've grown up my whole life getting used to and eventually embracing being part of the two, but to him there is a whole new aspect for him to get used to.

When I first decided to start blogging, it was recommended that I use Blogger, as I am doing, which has been OK, but I have a few friends who are using WordPress for their blogs and I prefer the format over there. So I'm thinking that when I next have a few days off (which believe me, in my line of work is a RARE WONDER), I am probably going to migrate the content of All Things Spice over there. I hope this doesn't annoy anyone too much. I am new to blogging and this has been a learning curve.

I hope nobody minds this. I will keep this site open for some time but, eventually completely move it over to WordPress. I like the look of the pages much better. My good friend Vanessa sent me some excellent tips about why I should move over there and quite frankly, I have never met a word that came out of that woman's mouth that wasn't good sense.

I appreciate that there is no way that this blog will be of interest to everyone. Most people will never have an interracial relationship, although the number is rising. This article on the BBC website just a few days ago showed that in the US last year, 15% of marriages were between couples of different race or ethnicity. This has more than doubled since 1980. Hopefully therefore, my little nice blog-ette will continue to be of interest to those of you who read it.

If anyone has any questions or concerns, please do let me know! :)

I shall end today's post with Cinderella, which I am sure many of you will fondly recall from Roald Dahl's 'Revolting Rhymes.' Enjoy.

 I guess you think you know this story.
 You don't. The real one's much more gory.
 The phoney one, the one you know,
 Was cooked up years and years ago,
 And made to sound all soft and sappy
 just to keep the children happy.
 Mind you, they got the first bit right,
 The bit where, in the dead of night,
 The Ugly Sisters, jewels and all,
 Departed for the Palace Ball,
 While darling little Cinderella
 Was locked up in a slimy cellar,
 Where rats who wanted things to eat,
 Began to nibble at her feet. 

 She bellowed 'Help!' and 'Let me out!
 The Magic Fairy heard her shout.
 Appearing in a blaze of light,
 She said: 'My dear, are you all right?'
 'All right?' cried Cindy .'Can't you see
 'I feel as rotten as can be!'
 She beat her fist against the wall,
 And shouted, 'Get me to the Ball!
 'There is a Disco at the Palace!
 'The rest have gone and I am jealous!
 'I want a dress! I want a coach!
 'And earrings and a diamond brooch!
 'And silver slippers, two of those!
 'And lovely nylon panty hose!
 'Done up like that I'll guarantee
 'The handsome Prince will fall for me!'
 The Fairy said, 'Hang on a tick.'
 She gave her wand a mighty flick
 And quickly, in no time at all,
 Cindy was at the Palace Ball!

 It made the Ugly Sisters wince
 To see her dancing with the Prince.
 She held him very tight and pressed
 herself against his manly chest.
 The Prince himself was turned to pulp,
 All he could do was gasp and gulp.
 Then midnight struck. She shouted,'Heck!
 Ive got to run to save my neck!'
 The Prince cried, 'No! Alas! Alack!'
 He grabbed her dress to hold her back.
 As Cindy shouted, 'Let me go!'
 The dress was ripped from head to toe.

 She ran out in her underwear,
 And lost one slipper on the stair.
 The Prince was on it like a dart,
 He pressed it to his pounding heart,
 'The girl this slipper fits,' he cried,
 'Tomorrow morn shall be my bride!
 I'll visit every house in town
 'Until I've tracked the maiden down!'
 Then rather carelessly, I fear,
 He placed it on a crate of beer.

 At once, one of the Ugly Sisters,
 (The one whose face was blotched with blisters)
 Sneaked up and grabbed the dainty shoe,
 And quickly flushed it down the loo.
 Then in its place she calmly put
 The slipper from her own left foot.
 Ah ha, you see, the plot grows thicker,
 And Cindy's luck starts looking sicker.

 Next day, the Prince went charging down
 To knock on all the doors in town.
 In every house, the tension grew.
 Who was the owner of the shoe?
 The shoe was long and very wide.
 (A normal foot got lost inside.)
 Also it smelled a wee bit icky.
 (The owner's feet were hot and sticky.)
 Thousands of eager people came
 To try it on, but all in vain.
 Now came the Ugly Sisters' go.
 One tried it on. The Prince screamed, 'No!'
 But she screamed, 'Yes! It fits! Whoopee!
 'So now you've got to marry me!'
 The Prince went white from ear to ear.
 He muttered, 'Let me out of here.'
 'Oh no you don't! You made a vow!
 'There's no way you can back out now!'
 'Off with her head!' The Prince roared back.
 They chopped it off with one big whack.
 This pleased the Prince. He smiled and said,
 'She's prettier without her head.'
 Then up came Sister Number Two,
 Who yelled, 'Now I will try the shoe!'
 'Try this instead!' the Prince yelled back.
 He swung his trusty sword and smack
 Her head went crashing to the ground.
 It bounced a bit and rolled around.
 In the kitchen, peeling spuds,
 Cinderella heard the thuds
 Of bouncing heads upon the floor,
 And poked her own head round the door.
 'What's all the racket? 'Cindy cried.
 'Mind your own bizz,' the Prince replied.
 Poor Cindy's heart was torn to shreds.
 My Prince! she thought. He chops off heads!
 How could I marry anyone
 Who does that sort of thing for fun?

 The Prince cried, 'Who's this dirty slut?
 'Off with her nut! Off with her nut!'
 Just then, all in a blaze of light,
 The Magic Fairy hove in sight,
 Her Magic Wand went swoosh and swish!
 'Cindy! 'she cried, 'come make a wish!
 'Wish anything and have no doubt
 'That I will make it come about!'
 Cindy answered, 'Oh kind Fairy,
 'This time I shall be more wary.
 'No more Princes, no more money.
 'I have had my taste of honey.
 I'm wishing for a decent man.
 'They're hard to find. D'you think you can?'
 Within a minute, Cinderella
 Was married to a lovely feller,
 A simple jam maker by trade,
 Who sold good home-made marmalade.
 Their house was filled with smiles and laughter
 And they were happy ever after.

What Matters To You?

This week's blog has been inspired by our own money saving efforts and the experiences of friends.

Whilst wedding planning, I had tips from some friends and colleagues, some of which were very useful, pointing me in the direction of certain suppliers, but I didn't have any friends who had had an Asian wedding locally, so I had to find my own way to do this and keep the budget in control.

Invariably Asian weddings, mean a lot of guests and a lot of food so you can't budget things in the same way. In Asia, weddings are a grand celebration, and invariably, most people's parents really want their kids to have a massive party. My Dad, for example, came to the UK with only £3. Yes, you read that single figure correctly. He has worked upwards from those humble £3 and it meant a lot for him to contribute to his daughter's wedding (he probably would have paid for it, but I wouldn't let him as it's also his life savings).

Martin Lewis provides really useful advice on his website Money Saving Expert. I did find however, that some of the tips didn't apply for an Asian wedding and also didn't apply to us. Both my husband and I work a lot of hours. We didn't have time for lots of DIY or have friends who would make the cake, do the photography, etc. I've learned the hard way not to mix friendship with business. Unless you know their work is consistently the standard you seek, then don't go in expecting more and being diappointed with less.

I would say that the most important thing that came out for us was prioritisation of what we really wanted and were willing to spend on, versus where we were strict and saved. This does become harder and harder the closer you get to your wedding day. I will freely admit that we weren't going to have table favours. I caved however when people started to book their hotels and ask about transport. Most guests were travelling between 150-10000 miles so we had little organza bags of chocolates and paper fans. I did some serious internet searching to get some very good prices on these.

The tables laid out with the bags of chocolates. We were actually glad to have them as they helped tie together the look, with the flower arrangements being different colours

The paper fans: these were much used on a hot day!

We also, as I've already discussed, didn't have a mandap and we carefully sourced suppliers. Having found that many British suppliers could provide good alternatives to the big Asian wedding suppliers, I went for those. Asian wedding suppliers aim to provide every service under one company name (thus also calling themselves wedding planners). This might be more simple but it is not the best way of spending your money and most definitely not the best way of getting a creative or high quality service. Most is mediocre and you have to have what they tell you that you are having.

Brides can go a little bit nuts when it comes to wanting to make sure their guests have a good time, but I think as long as you keep them fed and watered regularly and give them somewhere to sit down, they will be fine. If you have the budget to provide everything, then go for it, but otherwise think twice, or three times as was my case! We saved on areas that were not important to us... and you really have to think about this. Is it worth spending that extra money for ONE extra good photograph in your wedding album? We paid £80 in total to a local taxi firm for me to arrive in a luxury car with a chauffeur, plus return taxis to and from the venue for our family and wedding party. Wedding companies wanted to charge us £200-600 for the same journey one way. It was a lovely car and hardly anyone saw me arrive anyway. We had the same venue all day so it wasn't as though  we needed the flourish of a chauffeur driven vintage car or a horse-drawn carriage anyway.

One of our best money saving policies was having a venue that naturally provided so much to see and do

 

Courtesy of Pacific Wedding Photography

Throughout wedding planning, there was never a single moment where I decided that I was a 'princess' for the day. From my experience of asking women the same question on wedding forums, it would seem that this attitude is rare. Most women are trying their best to organise a lovely day with the means available to them. When you watch wedding TV shows, it's always 'being a princess for the day' and suppliers try to push you to pay more for services by tugging on that emotional need to make sure your guests have a good time and also a sense of entitlement... don't you WANT the best for yourself / your daughter on your wedding day?! There is so much pressure to have an unforgettable day, but being honest, before I was wedding planning myself, I have little recollection of the finer details of people's weddings. I never noticed flower arrangements and have no idea what the bride's hairdo was like. Remember, the vast majority of your guests, despite enjoying your day, will be the sam as this. Remember also, that celebrities have their weddings paid for nowadays by Hello, OK, etc. Unless you are loaded yourself, winning to spend your parents life savings on a day, or have a magazine or TV show pay for your wedding, remember that the marriage counts way more than the wedding. We cannot all earn vast amounts from sham marriages by the likes of Kim Kardashian. Those are your pennies and they go towards building your life, and marriage is a far greater thing than a wedding day.

The UK Asian Wedding Industry: My Gripes With You!

The British wedding industry is generally overpriced. There are a few suppliers who provide value for money, it's true, but you have to hunt for them. Nothing is worse however, than the British Asian wedding industry. I don't care one bit if this makes me a pariah amongst the suppliers. I also loathed Asian wedding magazines because there were only adverts, no real articles. The biggest articles on 'real weddings' tended to feature the name of the same wedding planner at least 899 times in a 1500 word wedding article. They were also full of images of very white looking 'Asian' girls for the wedding make up / hair ideas. I don't think lightening your skin is very common in Britain and whilst I understand how this has appeal in the Indian subcontinent, it is dictatorial and offensive in modern Britain. I also didn't want to read what a supplier should tell me that I ought to have, I wanted to see beautiful creative and fresh ideas and to be honest, I found more of these pertaining to Asian weddings in mainstream British wedding magazines and in wedding blogs, than I did in the Asian wedding magazines and pictures that I saw uploaded by British Asian suppliers onto their websites. Incidentally, I also found that they don't ever answer their emails and if you telephone them to find out about a wedding more than six months away, they tell you that they are not interested and to phone back later! One local Asian make up artist told me that she was not taking any bookings until she had finished planning her daughter's wedding and not to bother her for another six months! (thank goodness, a friend recommended ND Makeup who do makeup on Asian women really beautifully - it convinced me that you don't have to have an Asian makeup artist, who are more pricey than their British counterparts, if you are willing to have trials and find a really good one who has taken the time to learn about brown skin). The lack of professionalism really riled me.

Generally, because British Asian wedding suppliers are few and far between, they are also vastly overpriced. I found that the same lehengas and saris that cost a few hundred pounds in India, cost several thousand here. They were merely imported. It was actually cheaper to pay the cost of the plane fayre for a few of us than to buy a dress here.

The British Asian wedding industry also tends to be clustered in areas where there is a vast Asian populus, such as London and Leicester. It thus would have cost me a lot of money to travel in order to buy items for my wedding elsewhere in the UK. The other option (perhaps not so much for clothing) is hire, but even the costs for this, with the cost of transport added, were extortionate. One thing, that I found when I read websites that purported to give advice on Indian weddings in Britain, were that there was a lot of pushing of 'mandap hire.' Mandaps are large elaborate wedding stages. The reason people think they need a mandap is that a Hindu wedding is supposed to be held under cover. However, a roof is suitable cover and thus the cover of a mandap is not actually required. What they don't tell you is that it is just for show. I found the minimum cost of a mandap hire seemed to be in the region of £2000 with at least an additional £1000 for transport costs. The thing about the British Asian wedding industry is that because they are a small and select service, they manipulate and coerce couples into thinking they must spend extra on their supplies, but the truth is that there are plenty of easier and cheaper alternatives available, if you just think outside the box.

Our wedding venue, the pavilion of The Alnwick Garden is a particularly beautiful space anyway, but we decided to make the whole room into our own mandap with beautiful decoration. The Garden provided us with a stage for free and then we hired a party decorator The Event Dressers to decorate the venue. Lots of couples cleverly make their own decorations or buy off ebay and then re-sell, but we didn't really have the time to make things or spend time on the morning of the wedding decorating the venue. I worked night shifts up until the day before the wedding! We also decided not to go down the ebay route because it was pretty much the same price to hire from The Event Dressers as buy off ebay and we couldn't be bothered with tidying and collecting loads of items up early the next morning after the wedding! My husband had worked very hard as well and we both needed time to relax. Not the cheapest option I'll admit, but probably one of the easier options when you both work a lot of hours! Much cheaper however than the extortionate British Asian wedding suppliers!

The wedding stage was dressed with organza to make it a little bit prettier as it was solid black. Rather than fake thrones (which we found a bit Beckham wannabe anyway) that wedding suppliers provide, we provided our own low stools. We would have sat on the floor as is tradition, but my Dad who has arthritis would have struggled with pain, sitting on a hard floor for a long period of time!

I think our pictures will prove to anyone planning a British Asian wedding, who agrees that the suppliers are overpriced, that you don't need over-priced suppliers to have a beautiful wedding day. They're all amateur, as unfortunately my wedding photographer didn't take photographs of the room!

So to all couples planning alternative weddings from the traditional British norm, don't fall for what these suppliers tell you and don't be fooled into parting with cash unnecessarily. You can find lovely alternatives, without too much difficulty!

My makeup done by ND Makeup

My makeup by ND Makeup (picture courtesy of Pacific Wedding photography)

Our wedding stage for our Hindu wedding

More images of our wedding stage

Decoration of the room for the reception

The canopy lit up in the evening

The ceremony room, Chinese lanterns and an organza canopy decorated the ceiling, unifying the room with our decoration, making the whole room into our own Mandap

Fusion Music: aka Let Go Bridezilla!

Music was one of the most difficult things to choose for our wedding day! We have really very differing taste in music... and we are not one of those couples that have 'a song!' It took almost from the moment we were engaged to a couple of weeks before our wedding to agree. We thought we had found our first dance song when he proposed to me; Zero 7's 'Destiny' was playing which sounded like a really beautiful romantic song until we listened to it properly and decided that the line, 'I'm watching pooooooooooooooorrrrrrrrrrrrnnnnnnnnn in my hotel dressing gown' was inappropriate for a wedding (party for one anyone?!).

What we did agree on however, was that although the ceremony was for us, the reception was for our guests and we wanted all of them, old and young to have a good time. The one thing that we already had in mind, even before we got engaged was to feature a local band from our area, The Imposters, who we had seen playing at a local bar. When F:reez sings any other singer, he almost metamorphosises into that person. It's quite uncanny. During the times the band was not playing, and for the ceremony, we decided to book a DJ.  We had looked into live music for the ceremony but found the cost for a short period of time prohibitive, as our venue did not allow music to be played outdoors and we didn't feel it was worth paying a musician who would be silent for long periods of time.

I really wanted 'As The World Falls Down' from the ballroom scene of the movie Labyrinth. The lyrics are hauntingly beautiful. My husband-to-be however hated it! He felt that to include it would turn our wedding reception into a kids' movie! We had reached an impasse... I was really frustrated and felt that it was going to be pointless having a first dance at all as I thought if I gave him his way, he would choose the 'Ooo-ja-ooo-ja-ooo-ja' house music he so loves... but then I realised it was time I put my money where my mouth was. I had kept saying throughout my planning that I would totally trust him to plan the wedding if we were to go on 'Don't Tell The Bride' (which luckily neither of us would want anyway!). When I thought about it properly, I realised that he had given so much to me in the wedding planning. Unlike many women, who complain that their husbands are uninterested in the wedding planning, I had a partner who was interested and who was helpful (I had given him the tasks of booking our wedding videographer and cars himself - he had found suppliers very successfully). I knew deep down that he wouldn't choose something that I hated, so I told him the choices of music were entirely his. So much of a wedding day is about the woman - the dress, the flowers etc. It was time I incorporated some more of HIS choice into the day so that it was about both of us, not just me <I say this but I was quaking in my boots!>.

Anyway, I needn't have worried... his choices were just wonderful and much better than anything I could have chosen myself. His choice for first dance was John Legend's 'So High.' It was perfect: intricate, romantic, beautiful and summarised our relationship perfectly. It was also unique, which I really wanted. I wanted something that was about us, not just from the list of top 100 wedding dance songs featured on so many wedding websites.

Luckily, my husband is a democratic leader (!) and he involved me in choosing much of the music too, so even though the ultimate decisions were his, many choices were songs I loved too. He also appreciated that I knew much better than he does, what songs would appeal to our Indian guests and to our female ones! Colin, our DJ was very helpful and the band's playlist included lots of songs we loved.

Some of our ceremony songs included:

1. Israel Kamakawi'wo'ole 'Somewhere Over The Rainbow / What a Wonderful World' (which I walked down the aisle to).
2. 'Latika's Theme' from 'Slumdog Millionaire'
3. The Source vs Candi Staton 'You Got The Love' (at the conclusion of our ceremonies)

For our reception, the split between Western and Eastern music was probably 80:20. This was in part because, we obviously had a band, but also because finding proper fusion music was difficult. There are a few fusion bands / singers about but not all are appropriate to dance to (Kula Shaker comes to mind). However there were a few songs with a bhangra style such as Pussycat Dolls 'Jai Ho' (even though I can't bear the way Nicole Scherzinger mispronounces it 'Jay Ho' but hey ho!) and Jay Z vs Panjabi MC 'Beware of the Boys / Mandian Te Bach Ke, as well as a selection of popular songs from classic Bollywood movies that everyone would enjoy dancing to. I think the split was right however, as none of my Indian family were able to come over for the wedding unfortunately, therefore the shortest amount of time anyone who was Indian was attending our wedding had lived in the UK was over 25 years, many who were born here.

The only drawback I must say of giving my husband the ultimate choice over the wedding music was not having 'Dancing Queen!' He can't stand it! I think he's crazy... I mean, I love him, but I ask you, what is a wedding disco minus 'Dancing Queen?!' Ah well, we had a wonderful day and almost all of our guests complimented us on how much they had thought the music was perfect for every moment of  the day. You can't have everything!

Here are a couple of amateur photos of a couple of our guests enjoying the evening reception music! The fun and the laughter made it worth it!