From commited to married

This was written in December 2010 before I left for my wedding.

Sitting at the Los Angeles airport, I recollect the previous 3 months, the time after I got committed to Madhuri. In these four months I planned to do a lot of things, succeeded in doing some and failed in completing other tasks.  The day I was coming back to US after my short successful trip to India, I had set myself some short term goals. Few of those were making Madhuri comfortable with my life style and vice versa, making wedding arrangements, create a completely personalized wedding invitation and a wedding website , and ofcourse shopping and shopping.

I and Madhuri got engaged in a very short span of time. We haven’t got much time to interact with each other. The sole reason of me being adamant in having my wedding after at least 3months of my engagement was to give ourselves some time to get to know each other. If I check myself at this point after 3 months, I feel I’ve achieved what I wanted. I got to know more than a few things about her in this period.  I never wanted a girl who always says “Yes” to whatever I say.  She was supporting, motivating and also correcting me whenever she felt doing so.  *Touchwood*.

In these 3 months, we both had our Birthdays. First Birthdays are always special. Since her Birthday was on 3^rd and mine on 13^th, I got a chance to unleash my creativity first. In one of our conversations, I got to know that one of her most prized gifts was a DVD of Athadu movie by her friends. If a DVD can make her feel so happy then how about a more personalized gift? Idea flashes. Thanks to my friends I was able to get an autograph from her favorite hero. Well, that wasn’t enough. I thought this would be the best occasion for me to introduce all my friends to her. Instead of pictures I’ve chosen videos. I asked all my friends and cousins to record a video wishing her. By evening my email was flooding with the videos coming from all the directions of USA. All I had to do was to compile them and make one video. I was glad to have friends and cousins who are ready to help me any time of the day. Love you all.

Then it was 13^th, my Birthday. Two days prior to my Birthday I started getting gifts. Initially, a T-shirt and a Watch, the next day a cake and on the actual day a nice picture of both of us on a beautiful glass frame. The fact that Madhuri made the arrangements of me receiving the gift one each day thrilled me. Well, thanks to her Aunt and cousins for making my day special.

After the Birthday bashes, it was the time for some serious commitment on the wedding plans. I always wanted to have my wedding invitation special. Owing to the wide circle of my friends all over India I wanted my invitation to be in different languages. If I have to include different languages then instead of arranging them randomly I thought of arranging in them in the place of their respective states in India map. Then it was the time to decide the line. I found it tough to zero down on one line since many lines were popping out in my brain. Finally I’ve decided on having “We welcome you on our wedding” as the line. Thanks to Bhavna (Kashmiri), Randip (Punjabi), Hiral (Gujrathi), Shreyasi (Bengali), Swapnil ( Marathi), Sandhya (Kannada), Abhi and his roomie(Malayalam), Vidya ( Tamil) and an  lecturer whose name I don’t know for Sanskrit, I was able to compile all these languages into one card. Then thanks to Pallavi Roy, who gave me some beautiful lines from her wedding card and let me use them in my card. Finally, thanks to Charitha in creating a beautiful background for the picture I wanted to have in my card.

Once the wedding card was done, the next task I wanted to accomplish was to create a wedding site. I didn’t want to use the wedding templates which many of the wedding websites offer. I wanted my website to have my own mark on it.  Being a guy with a non IT background, it was indeed a big ask for me to create a whole website. After some research I decided to do my website using Word press. Thanks to Sunil for suggesting me the places where I can buy domain names and web space. The name for my website struck me instantly. It will obviously be a combination of both of our names but not in a regular way. Deeplymad was the name which came into my thought. But, unfortunately, it was taken I had to settle with Deeplymadz which was equally good for me. The process of creating the website took me more than a month. The reasons being me a rookie, not much information available online and top of it my lazyness. Eventually, with the help of Abhi, Phani and some anonymous websites, I finished my creation. The link for the website is www.deeplymadz.com

These were the things which I have achieved successfully in these 3 months. The unfinished tasks were getting rid of my lazyness , putting up some weight and trying to save money by keeping a tab on my spending.