Chinni's marriage

Now it is more than two months since my sister marriage has happened. I have been thinking for so many days to write the blog about the good time we had during my sister's marriage. I never got free time to think about it for the last two months. As this weekend I am not tied up with any other activities, I decided to finish this one. But how should I start!!!. This one is not a trip post to describe the places we visit & time we spent in the journey etc. This one is completely different. I have no clue on how much time it takes to finish. From what occasion should I start!!! I think it is better to start how we found new member(chinna bava nagesh) into our family.

Our family spent lot of time to find the right match for chinni. We actually registered chinni's profile in both Kakateeya marriage links and Telugumatrimonial.com websites. Match proposals we get from these always used to fail for some or other reason. Suddenly one fine day morning I got a call from bhaskar annayya(Brother-in-law of nagesh). He told me that they are interested in chinni's profile as they found it in Telugumatrimonial.com website. It seems bhaskar annayya and Nagesh bava are very close friends. I actually the detials about their telugu matrimonial registration details. When I checked the details in the website, I came to know that nagesh's initial is sunkara and they are from siripuram village. Fortunately I have few freinds from the same village. I immediately called my engineering friend sunkara satish and srinu annayya(He works in my village panchayat office although his native is siripuram) to enquire about Nagesh. Since siripuram is not a big town, it is very easy to know each other. Fortunately both of them knew him very well and gave very good feedback.

I got nagesh's (He works as a software engineer in singapore) phone number and his mail id from bhaskar annayya. I sent chinni's photo to nagesh's mail id and askem him to send his latest photo. After I got the reply from him, I sent the nagesh's photo to chinni(Actually she was in UK for onsite project). We planned to arrange pelli chupulu after she comes back from UK.

Chinni's onsite work is going to be done before the last week of august. Meanwhile Me, nanna and srinu perosnally went to siripuram and formally invited Nagesh's family to pelli chupulu in the first week of september. We held pelli chupulu at our home on first weekend of september (Spetember 1st). We asked both nagesh & chinni to have normal chat so that they will get to know each other. Both the families liked each other and decided to go ahead with this match.


I came back to bangalore after the weekend for my routine office work. After few days nanna called us and informed that engagement & marriage dates were fixed as november 5th and 15th respectively. We felt we had decent amount of time to finish all the arrangements for marriage. Nanna immediately booked the marriage hall(Newly built satya sai baba kalyana mandapam ) for november 15th in my village. Actually nanna is too good in making these kind of arrangements. You don't need to feel the pressure if you have father like him. Only problem with him is he takes opinions from multiple people and eventually will have tough time. Coming to the plans which were happening in bangalore, It's almost one and half year over since pedda bava bought the car. We have been planning for long drive in the car for quite some time. It used to fail always for some or other reason. We(me, pedda akka and pedda bava) decided that we should go on long drive for chinni's engagement. Anyway there is 10days gap between engagement and marriage, we felt it will be really useful if you have car at your hand.



Mean time we went once to vadlapudi once for my younger niece's(Vaishu) naming cermony(Put the actual date). Munnu(Elder niece) enjoys the company of her sister vaishu very well. Whenever vaishu cries, I never forget the way munnu tries to keep her calm(By saying oommma, oommaa..). We went to vijaywada and bought the few cloths required for the engagement. We gave ordering for all the marriage gold ornaments at that time itself. After coming back to bangalore, pedda akka went once to chennai(Chinni works in chennai) to buy pattu saries for marriage. Before the engagement itself we almost finsished the cloth shopping. Me and pedda akka took off from the office for that whole fortnight. Pedda bava planned to come back to bangalore after the engagement and join us again before the marriage.

Finally the day which we have been waiting for quite some time has come(November 2nd). Since none of us had the experiance of long drive, we asked naveen(my cousin.. He has lot of experiance in driving) to come to bangalore. All five of us(Me, Naveen, Akka, Bava and Munnu) started early morning 3AM on 3rd november. Bava told us that he will drive till bangalore outskirts(Hoskote), from there naveen can take care. Since that is early morning, volvo buses & trucks which are coming into bangalore will not give you side and all of them come with High beam lights on. There were couple of close crossings on the highway. We are all scared and asked bava to give the driving seat to naveen. Once naveen took over, he drove carefully till renigunta. By the time we reached Renigunta, it is already 8AM in the morning. We all had breakfast there, and bava took over from there. He desparately wanted to drive on the highways :). Road is very good from there as we enter into the NH-5. Frankly speaking bava can't control the speed, he touched the maximum speed of 130Kmph..Akka used to tell him to control the speed. I also experimented the driving for 1 hour from kavali to ongole. Finally we reached vadlapudi by 2PM in the afternoon. For first timers driving 680Kms in less than 11 hours is bit too fast :).
All the family members met in the evening to discuss the arrangements for the engagement(5th(Monday) evening 7PM). Since both the functions(Engagement and marriage) are being held in the village, we thought we invite only close relatives. Even then the figure touched 400 plus (including the expected 100 from the siripiram). Finally we agreed to have the mandapam on the open terrace and to have the dinner arrangements in front of the home. We got the menu list required for the dinner from the Sivaji(Head cook), list from tent house etc. Whole sunday we were busy with buying all those items.

My school friend Jani came by afternoon to help us. Actually there will be lot of relatives to help if we have function like this in the village. We finished all the arrangements by evening and we were waiting for the bride groom party to come. They told us that they will come by 6PM. We crossed our fingers with the tension as it started drizzling slightly. If it rains, everything will be messed up as we decorated engagement hall on the open terrace. Otherside brdegroom party didn't reach our village even by 7.30PM. Fortunately drizzling has gone by the time they reached(7.45PM). Already people in the village has come to have the dinner before. Generally people in the village will have early dinner. We can't ask them to wait until the engagement finishes. One side function was happening on the open terrace and dinner is being served in front of the home. Looks like many people were turned up and by the time we eat in the end, almost all the items were finished.



Poojari has given lagna patrika to both the parties to prepare the wedding invitations. Engagement went on very well with lot of help from the relatives, friends and in fact from the god(We prayed the god to stop the rain).
We have just nine days left before the marriage, we have to print the wedding cards and distribute them to realtives as early as possible. Next day early morning me and pedda akka went to vijayawada and selected one beautiful card and gave that to printing as well.

Printer guy took one day to give the printed cards back. We actually put the first wedding card in the pooja room and we actually put pasupu to every card and arranged them properly. Nanna & Chinni immediately left to hyderabad to distribute the cards to relatives as well as chinni's friends on 7th night. Next day early morning Me,Pedda akka and naveen went to siripuram and gave them our card. After having snacks there we moved towards ravela and invited all the relatives(Nanna side) we have there. From there we went to Ponnekallu and nidumukkala and invited them for chinni's marriage. Main problem with wedding cards distribution is every time you go to one house, you have to eat something at every place. They won't listen even you tell them that you already had snacks :). It was almost 9'0 clock in the night by the time we reached vadlapudi back.
Out of all the hindu festivels I always enjoy deevali very well. When we were studying, we three families(ours, Chinnamma(amma's sister), Babai(Nanna's brother) used to celebrate deevali very well. Nanna used to get deevali crackers from madras(He used to export curry leaf to madras market). Even I went to madras couple of times to buy the crackers. Totally we are eight children(Pedda akka, chinni, Me, Latha, Vanitha, Naveen, Kranti, Sravanthi) in the family used to gather and burst crackers combinedly. I think after 1997 whole family never gathered again for deevali as we were studying in different places. Latha actually missed the engagament as she couldn't get leave for whole 15days. But we called and forced her to make it for the deevali(November 9th). Fortunately this year deevali came in the gap between engagement and wedding. This year we enjoyed deevali very well with everybody there including my sweet niece munnu. Actually this year one bomb bursted in munnu's hand :).Fortunately nothing has happend to her.

All those days we used to play cards till 12PM and all of us used to sleep on the floor.





















Will be continued later!!!!!