The Search for the Sari
Updated:11:40 PM ET August 18, 2009
By Anjori Sinha

As you recall from my Bridal Party recap that I had four lovely BMs who were all excited to wear a saree. Now the question was which one. There are hundreds to choose from! There is a whole blog dedicated to sarees!

Actually it was this exact blog that told me what NOT to do when having BMs wear sarees. There were some bad pictures of BMs in faded/drab colors that did not look good at all together. Which is why I wanted each girl to have a different saree but in the same color.

Sari Search – Part I

Yes, the sari search was so long and complicated it has to be broken down into parts.

I did not have a dress for myself but I knew it was going to be red or maroon; and either a lengha or saree. I was a one dress girl all the way! Leaning towards a maroon (I love that color :P ) I told my girls to pick a color from the pile: Cream, Navy blue, Royal blue, or Light blue.

Here are a couple that I looked at initially.

Now, since my FI at that time was paying out of pocket for the whole entire wedding (I had a mortgage to keep up and did not make nearly as much as him) I had asked my bridesmaids to pay for their sarees. Which is why I wanted to keep a budget in mind .. that didn’t add up to more than $70-$80 per girl.

Sari Search – Part II

A few weekends later, I had found a lengha that I really, really, really liked! :) It was maroon (yay! Go me!) and it had emerald green and gold embroidery ALL over it. Now biased to a new dress, I picked a new color for my BMs.

EMERALD GREEN! :)

We all went saree shopping so that they could get a feel for what the different fabrics were like (chiffon, georgette, silk, etc.. )

After a day of saree shopping we took to the online stores (more in budget). And of course, there were so many options I had to come up with a "saree palette" to compare them all. The task for each girl.. pick one shade they liked best (majority wins) .. easy right? WRONG! :-/





Sari Search – Part III

I let a few more weeks go by (timing was getting tight at this point .. as these sarees needed 30 days to be sewed and shipped + shipping time from India).

** Enter an excited and stressed bride.

Excited as I had found my dress! Yay!! It was different from the dress I liked before, red with gold embroidery all over. Not maroon but crimson red ..

So as you can imagine, crimson red and emerald green .. looks a LOT like Christmas. And I did not really like the idea of being a Christmas tree at my wedding. :P

Solution: A new color! But which one? Cream, red, and green were crossed off (cream because my groom would be wearing cream and red sherwani.)

We debated between black and yellow for a while (two colors easier to match shades with) with .. no agreements. Later I ruled out black later realizing how gloomy it would look.




The black sarees were done graciously by Jenn.




One more week went by, we met up again and this time, I said, pick one for all. We sat around a round Panera Bread table and .. went through several pictures. If the majority liked it, the saree stayed in the pile. We went through this until there were three left. Then I told each to write on a piece of paper, the order of which saree they’d pick, majority won. And in the end we all were very happy with the decision! :)





Source: All sarees seen here were taken from www.utsavsarees.com
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