A WEDDING in the Family...and...

"There is an upcoming  wedding in the family, that is, my dear husband's (DH) brother is getting married in January 2011". Innocuous sentence eh? No!! There's a wedding in the family is synonymous with "yours truly is on a shopping frenzy" and DH is alternately losing his mind and fearing for my sanity.

Being back in India is insanely exciting come wedding and saree shopping time.

Excitement aside, this woman has hardly ever shopped for sarees in her life and never before has she done it without mom or an aunt beside her to give her moral support...now I am dependent on DH for moral support while BUYING SAREES...ouch!!

The scene kinda goes like this, we walk into a store having decided beforehand what kinda stuff we are looking for, gape at a hundred different varieties of sarees flown, flung, draped and defined for our benefit -

by the end of which we are too stunned to decide anything - shrug apologetically, give perplexed smiles and inch our way out murmuring that we would be back the next day...knowing full well that we won't go back and the sales guy knows it too!

For those of you wondering why all this bewilderment...try figuring out stuff like pure georgette, dye-able, brocaded, self embroidered with silver tikkis (Not stones!) with traditional border vs synthetic georgette(that's why it is cheaper madam), double colored, velvet floral bordered shimmer material with stones (Not tikkis!)...yada, yada, yada....

or how about a Benarasi pure silk patola vs, Benarasi Brocade vs Benarasi Jamaver vs South Silk (meaning kanjeevaram) plain or south silk enhanced with Kutchi work, kundan work, kantha work...etc etc etc

or better still the latest fad...net sarees with beautiful handwork including tikkis, crystals and uncut diamonds ranging in price from a few hundred dollars to a few thousand dollars...whew! I wouldn't mind paying thousands of dollars( one day in the future if and when I can afford to that is!!) for an elegantly woven and worked silk saree...after all the production of my saree begins with thousands  of poor little silkworms (which means my saree is organic, right?)...but I cannot imagine paying so much for what to me appears to be gorgeously colored and worked mosquito nets....but on the other hand some of these net sarees are out of this world elegant...so maybe they are not so bad after all....

...and this is just the beginning, we still haven't touched silk cotton...Italian crepe...pure chiffon...raw silk...paper silk...tussar silk...moonga silk....blah blah blah...or sarees from all different states and districts...cities, towns and villages...handcrafted vs machine woven...chemical dyes vs vegetable dyes, royal vs rustic....oooooooooofff...gasp...some water please...

If this is not enough to fry your brains...you must be made of one of those pure silk with pure gold thread border kinda material that they promise will live on in full glory for eons after we depart this saree laden earth...

After going through this process(torment?) in some smaller boutiques and indie shops, we felt braver to approach the big guns of the city. (Or may be the fact that the wedding is less than two months away has something to do with this sudden spurt of courage??)

So now we have actually started buying sarees!! More about that later...coz you see after buying comes the drooling and draping...and plenty more ings....