So the first step of planning a wedding is of course the invitations. For us instead of having the same invitation the guy and the girl actually have different invitations. Since I made the trip to India to shop for the wedding I got to pick out both of them, which was actually a lot harder then it seems since there are so many choices. We had to have an invite that had several cards inside for all the different events which made it a little easier to narrow down. Our first wedding related ceremony was to write out our wedding invitations. The guy and girl have separate ceremonies for this since the first few invitations written are special ones normally which get dropped off at our temple to get blessed as well as those formally inviting the guys family to the wedding. Of course the guys family also formally invites the girls family as well!

Mine was fairly low key but I wanted to share the decorations since most of them were DIY things.

Red is a main color in Indian weddings, in fact we didn’t even use black ink to label our invites it’s considered bad luck. The fabric in this picture was just purchased from the local Joann’s and we just pinned some rose petals onto it to add a little color. The statue is one of Ganesh to bless the ceremony, Ganesh is also commonly used on wedding invitations which are called “kankotri”. Those gorgeous pots were hand painted by my mom and I have a few detailed shots of those later.

The table was all set with the invitations and those gorgeous pens and pen holders we purchased in India. There are also small “diyas” or lamps lit and the red rings you see were actually gems that were used later on to add some sparkle to my flower girls dresses.

Here is a close up of the gorgeous boxes also hand painted by my mom to hold the invitations, she actually cut up one of our RSVP cards and stuck it to the front of the box and it added such a fun touch!

A close up of the invitations I loved the smaller RSVP cards isn’t the paper and print gorgeous?

Traditionally the guys get to write the special ones while the ladies sing wedding songs it’s a lot of fun!

These trays were also hand painted and decorated, they were used to complete a part of the ceremony where girls sift through the grains that wold be used to cook at the time of the wedding.

These pots were also painted and designed by my mom and they were set outside with diyas to greet everyone as they came in.

Overall it was a fun gathering to get everyone in the mood and to start off the wedding preparations in full swing!