Hen Weekend: I would like to say a big thanks to the bestest big sister in the world, Bina, who managed to plan the most amazing and luxurious hen weekend. It was exactly what I needed to de-stress and came as a total surprise to me. I had a lovely weekend spending time with my wonderful friends and cousins and it was without a doubt one of the most unforgettable moments of my life.
Sangeet, Pithi and Satak: Yateen and I would like to both thank our families who helped with the sangeet, pithi and satak. There was a lot of running around in the lead up to the wedding and the stress was lessened, for our parents, by the many hands helping out.
Ever since Yateen got down on one knee and proposed on our three year anniversary, our lives were taken over with planning our perfect wedding day. Exactly two years later our day had finally arrived. We had planned every detail with military precision and made sure our wedding was a reflection of our personalities, our hobbies but most of all our love for one another.
We were fortunate to have had the most perfect day ever (even the weather held out for us) but that wouldn’t have been possible without the help and support of our many friends and family.
We would like to thank everyone who helped in the run up to the wedding and on the day itself, however, there are a few who deserve an extra special mention. So we wanted to take some time out to individually thank those people who made our day run smoothly so that we could sit back, relax and enjoy our wedding day.
Tablecloths: Thanks to Hansafui and Yateen’s Mum for cutting and hemming our centre tablecloths, I know they were given at short notice but we got them back in three days!
Favours: Thanks to Sudhir for helping mark out the net for the seed boxes. Thanks to Aveni, Jeshika and Asma for grouping the chocolates, thanks to Bhavin and Dad for cutting and sealing the ribbon and thanks to mum for helping me tie the ribbon around the favours, I know we were all bored after the first 30 but we continued and finally made the whole batch of 300.
Photo centrepieces and table place card names: Thanks to Asma and Mum for helping to make the table place cards. Thanks to Shilpa and Sheena for putting together the photo centrepiece cards
Setting up on the big day: Thanks to Vinaymama and Rashmimama for transporting all the necessary items to the venue early in the morning. A huge thanks to Fuzz, Sunil, Asma, Shilpa & Geeta for waking up early and arriving at the hall and making sure that the hall was decorated to how we had envisaged it to be. We put our trust and faith in all of you to make sure that all the little details, we had worked so hard on were perfectly laid out, and you didn’t let us down! Thanks to Asma, Geeta and Shilpa who made sure that the day ran smoothly...they were pretty much our wedding planners for the day. They dealt with all our suppliers on the day, ushered the guests to their seats, made sure the favours were handed out, distributed the cake and those were only a few of their responsibilities from a very long list we had given to them.
Chauffeur: Thanks to Rikki for waking up early to drive us to our early morning photo shoot and back to our home after the wedding ceremony. More importantly, thanks for decorating and letting us borrow his lavish car for the day.
Photos: Thanks to Hinesh, Tejash, Tikubhai, Sunil, Fuzz, Bina, Sheena, Shilpa and Geeta for making sure that the family photo sessions ran to schedule...quickly and smoothly.
I would also like to thank my parents not only for their financial help but more importantly, the trust and belief they had in the both of us to plan our big day. We had decided to go against some of the ‘traditional customs’ to have a unique wedding and they were fully supportive with the decisions we made. They were open to our various ideas and we would not have had the courage to go ahead with our plans if they were not behind us 100% so we really appreciated their help.
Last but not the least, I want to thank my perfect husband, Yateen, who spent endless evenings and weekends helping me to put the whole wedding together and for putting up with my demands and total need for perfection.
But mainly I would like to say a big thanks to him for being so involved in every decision process for each little aspect for our wedding. I am so glad to have had him by my side along every step of the way. Every last detail for the wedding had been planned by the both of us. We knew what we wanted, how we wanted it and worked extremely hard to get everything we had dreamed of and Yateen was understanding enough not to let me compromise on any aspect of the big day. It may not have been the norm but sharing all those moments like picking out both our outfits, buying my jewellery to the food-tasting sessions were done jointly. It was all this time spent together, planning, that made the wedding seem more special as we saw our day unfold around us. But what made it most special was that amongst all the time he had spent planning the wedding, he’d managed to find some time to plan my surprise seven week honeymoon, which was magical.
I am truly fortunate to be able to say that I had the wedding of my dreams – actually it was more than I had dreamed of!!!!
Photograph contributors:
Official wedding photographer: Apresh Chavda
Unofficial wedding photographers: Ketan Arya, Bina Patel, Cheryl Kanji, Hinesh Patel, Yateen’s Dad
The honeymoon was almost 18 months in the planning, and some parts were fully booked a year in advance. I knew exactly where I wanted to go and what I wanted to do when I got there most of which was truly once in a lifetime stuff. I would like to give a huge thanks to Nigel Armitage and the rest of his amazing team at Millingtons Independent Travel who helped me realise my dreams and to ensure that Leena had a honeymoon that she would never forget. Thanks for putting up with all the fire alarms going off everytime I had an appointment. I would also like to thank dad for his financial help for the business class flights.
My brother and I are fortunate to have such a creative and talented mum who makes us homemade cakes for our birthdays. As a teenager, I was always fascinated at how she managed to perfectly decorate each cake as well as baking such tasty, fluffy sponge cakes. I would always try and help where I could but never had the courage to actually bake and decorate a cake from scratch. Using my mum’s cakes as inspiration I set out to attempt my first cake which was a birthday cake for Yateen. It was acceptable but nowhere near the quality of my mum’s cakes, so feeling a little disheartened I hung up my baking shoes.
It was only when Mr GDF decided to hold a Pensions Baking Competition that my competitive nature took over and I started taking cake-baking more seriously. As I had settled into my new home I was keen to put the oven to good use so over the next few months I was trying out new flavours of sponge cakes and trying to perfect my decorating skills. Luckily I had two cousins who were willing to be my guinea pigs and try out all the various flavours (Thanks Aveni and Jeshika)
With some input from my two helpers (Thanks Tom and Cheryl), I had baked a few novelty cakes (treasure chest and cola cake) which seemed to turn out pretty well. After weeks of trials I was finally ready to settle on an idea as my entry for the cake competition, I decided to recreate the Sydney Opera House (Yateen and I had been there at the start of the year so I thought it would be apt to try and construct it). Fortunately it turned out pretty well and I managed to get top marks and win the prestigious trophy.
And the rest, as they say, is history...
Well actually...since then, friends and family have asked me to make cakes with specific themes in mind. I then come up with a few ideas and depending on which idea they like, I make the cake exactly to their requirements. Sometimes I have been lucky enough to have free rein over the design and the end results have worked out well. With the use of various books, TV programmes and advice from my mum and Auntie Les, I’ve gradually been improving my decorating techniques.
The best thing about cake-baking is that I finally get to express my creative flair. Baking the cake is the easy bit, it is trying to get the cake to look realistic or as close to the original design, which is the challenging part…but it is a challenge that I relish. Most people assume that decorating would be the stressful part, but for me it is the most enjoyable bit. Hopefully, over the next few months I will get some more baking equipment (hint hint my lovely husband) and continue developing my decorating skills and creating some more interesting cakes!
In the meantime keep checking the cakes section of the website for my latest designs.