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| Modern Dulhan |
The Dress can be fire engine red maroon fuchsia or some shade of red the name of which can only be found in the Crayola dictionary of colors.
Then there is the custom handiwork on the dulhan's jhorA. All the intricate design work is hand made.
And the craft is practiced by a few specialized tailors in India and Pakistan.
Couple this with the fact that since no Desi-Muslim weddings take place during the months of Ramadan and Muharram, there is a rush of weddings subsequent to these months. During Ramadan even the Tailors work limited hours. All this would be pretty limiting factors by themselves. Throw in an unusually heavy monsoon season rainfall, unprecedented rainfall and floods in Pakistan, and suddenly you are up against some incredible obstacles in terms of the length of time it will take to get the brides clothes done on time.
Will you have time for a fitting? Will there even be a fitting session? Who knows.
The point is that the Dulhan's clothes now lie on the critical path (if you were making a schedule for the wedding) and there is no slack time what so ever.
This is not good.
Moreover the cost just went up 20%
If cost is no object one can walk into one of the exclusive Boutique's and buy an exquisite bridal dress for about $6000.00 however if your budget is slightly more modest than this, than you have to learn to play the Tailor's game:
Which goes something like this:
Thank God found Tailor
Oh no
Tailor AWOL
Losing mind
give mo money
money not working
losin mind
tailor gone
what to do
never mind
I-give-up
game over
everyone crying
On a serious note the only protection you can have is to find someone who knows people who know people. Preferably some of the people they know includes a bridal tailor.
After you (the Bride) have picked your basic color for the bridal dress - which you pick after you have picked what jewelry you will be wearing. The jewelry may or may not belong to you, it may be your Mom's or even your grandmother's - which is either gifted to you or loaned to you depending on how well off your family is - for your wedding.
Ideally the clothes designer will pick a color off of the jewelery to coordinate your Bridal clothes colors. However there is no single best way to do this.
Typically the clothes designer is either a relative, or a close friend, or one of the Sahelian.
In our case we are so lucky that Mona Aunty agreed to take on the job. She is a pro without actually working at it. She just loves to do it. Mona Aunty - I say Aunty because my daughter says Aunty and I have never personally met her - is Annia's Mom and is the most amazing person in the world. Annia is my daugther's BFF.
Anyway Mona Aunty explained to my wife how a thicker thread might cover the dulhan ka jo'Ra in a less costly way however would not look as nice and why and to go ahead and splurge for the finer thread to get the fine look that comes from true craftsmanship.
Who knew?
