We just celebrated one month, alhamdulillah!

Time truly flies... I'm still in disbelief about being married... sort of, at least!

And wow... it's like it's already been a month.

The wedding went absolutely smoothly, even though so many things kept coming up last second... but really, alhamdulillah (All Praise to God) everything went perfectly.

And since everybody had basically come for the weekend, we didn't have to stress to clean everything up in a hurry... people came, attended and left pretty much the next day and so we had the chance to take things slowly one at a time and then tidy up.

A lot of other unfortunate events happened the week after the wedding but we've been able to handle them and pull through alright :D

There's sooo many things that I'm grateful to God for... alhamdulillah... really, we have all been blessed in sooo many ways.

Presents all around...

We celebrated the religious holiday of Eid Al-Fitr on Wednesday (it comes after Ramadaan) and so my sister and I decided to get together and buy my paternal grandmother a ring as a present for her, on this festive occasion.

We went to Kay Jewelers, and were extremely short on time, but managed to buy a diamond ring for my grandma and also I ended up buying a marquis-cut emerald ring for my mom (unfortunately, I am currently jobless and so don't have much money and so I ended up buying my mom a lab-created emerald as opposed to a naturally-occurring one, which was a little over 300 bucks =( )

Mom knew that we were buying a ring for my grandma, but my grandma did not know. And my mom had no clue that I was buying her a ring...

So alhamdulillah when we got home, everyone was pleasantly surprised!

Mom's ring:

Another ring :)

My sister bought me my wedding present today, and it was supposed to be a surprise.

But she told my paternal grandma about it and showed her the ring, while I was away at school.

Then, my sister went off to work and when I came back from school, my paternal grandmother (who is hard of hearing), hadn't realized that the present was supposed to be a surprise, and told me all about it!

The only thing that I did not know was, what kind of ring it was... she said that it had a black 'stone' or something on it...

That got me thinking... what could it be?

So eventually when my sis got home, my grandmother told her, "I already gave her the good news!"... my sister was terribly disappointed, but we didn't make it apparent to my poor grandmother.

Anyways, so my sister decided to give me the ring today as there was no point in hiding it :(

I found out the ring had a black pearl, surrounded by little diamonds on the side! i totally loooove it, alhamdulillah! And, I was, pleasantly surprised!

I'm very picky when it comes to pearls... i don't like white/cream pearls that much... I totally love black pearls, but still... I'm picky about the kind of pearl rings that are out there... I've got to say, my sister did an excellent job!

I couldn't have done better myself, masha'Allah!



So, above is a picture of the ring, from the retailer's website... this ring is slightly less expensive online than it was in-store... don't know why! And so I don't really know how much she paid for it...

Also, the ring itself is way better than what it looks like in the picture... The ring is far more delicate... the diamonds are also smaller and not very flashy, which I love! Because, believe me, I have myself a flashy diamond ring! (my wedding ring)

Bad day...

(continued)

I had bought some awesome cards to print our invites on (they were black, red and cream in color... very pretty though), but my dad went ahead and had cards printed from a customer of his who works in the business...

Problem is, i HATE HATE HATE the cards... 'A' apparently liked them... but I had already picked out the type that I wanted and now I'm stuck :(

So dad actually went and returned the cards that I had, and so we're gonna have to stick with his...

Also, the cards that I picked out were 1/4 of the price of the ones that my dad bought!

Sigh... can't do anything though :(

Bad day + happiness

I found out last night that, alhamdulillah, people are actually buying things off my bridal registry. One person told my mom that she had bought me a blender (she told her in confidence, anyways) and that she loved the items on my registry because they were so practical and affordable :D

I was really happy, because when I had made the registry I thought that no one would really buy off of it. The reason for that was, traditionally, guests give clothes, jewelry and sometimes money as a wedding present.

Anyways, so when I got home last night and checked my registry, I found out that four items had been bought off of it! Wow! So I know for sure that I'm getting a blender, sandwich maker, rice cooker and an electric kettle :)

Alhamdulillah... well anyways, so I just went online, like 2 second ago, and found out that someone bought a comforter set off of the registry too! All of this makes me really happy because I'm really happy there's people out there who actually are willing to spend that kind of money on me... it's a special kind of feeling! I am really grateful to Allah.

[to be continued...]

My Clothes...

My grandma came from India on August 27th and she brought along with her some clothes that we had my uncle's wife get stitched for me.

In our tradition, the mother of the bride gives the bride any odd number of outfits... a lot of times it is 25 outfits... LOL... my mom got 10 new outfits made for me, clearly we're not very traditional...

I also got 3 new outfits as a present from my uncles in India and so that made a total of 13 new outfits... my aunt was nice enough to even put in matching bangles with a lot of the clothing!

And, she even packed all the outfits in plastic, making them look store-bought as opposed to tailor-made! But they were amazing... We were very happy with the job she had done :)

Alhamdulillah... above are some pics of the outfits, my cousin e-mailed these to me while she was packing up all the clothes with my aunt and her sister.

Oh, and I do not know what I'm going to be wearing on my wedding day... I mean I know what the outfit 'is' (it's a "lehnga"... google image it :) ), but I have not seen it.

The reason for that is because of another tradition... wear his family will buy my clothes and my family buys his :)

Nowadays, people usually just give each others' families money to go and get an outfit made with it, so that the bride and groom get to wear what they, themselves, picked out... my mother-in-law-to-be had asked if we wanted to get the outfit made here or if she should get it made there... my mom opted to have them get it made there, because to get a traditional dress over here it's firstly very expensive, and secondly, you end up paying for something that is not even comparable to what you could get back in Pakistan for the same price.

So, yeah, my outfit is coming from Pakistan! All I know about it is that it's the color 'tea-pink', which u shd google too... because i describe the color as a 'grayish pink', which my sister finds to be absurd! haha

We have bought his suit, tie and shirt for him too :p (i only picked out the tie, because i ended up not going to the mall the day my parents went... but i was happy with their choice, nonetheless... thankfully, they've got good taste!)

So insha'Allah we'll both love our in-laws' choice for the both of us :)

Marriage License

We just filled out the form to obtain a marriage license today...
so yeah, it's getting really close now!

And i'm a little nervous, but alhamdulillah doing better than before :)

I did sort of 'gasp' when I realized today how little time there is and when we submitted the marriage license form today to the Probate Court over here...

Wow!