CEREMONY ENTRANCE SONGS
Groomsmen
Salaam-E-Ishq – Tenu Leke
Tere Dware Pe Aai Baraat – Vivah

Groom
Sajan Ji Ghar Aaye – KKHH
Baharon phool barsao – Suraj

Bridesmaids
Ajab Si – Om Shanti Om
Pee Loon – Once Upon A Time in Mumbai

Bride (instrumentals of any of these are very nice)
Singh Is King – Teri Ore
Guru – Tere Bina
Jodhaa Akbar-Jashn-E-Baharaa

RECEPTION ENTRANCE SONGS – HINDI (great for parents!)
Mauja Hi Mauja – Jab We Met
Twist – Love Aaj Kal
Deewangi Deewangi – Om Shanti Om
Dhoom Tana – Om Shanti Om
Disco Wale Khisko – Dil Bole Hadippa

RECEPTION ENTRANCE SONGS – ENGLISH

Bridal Party
Beautiful People – Chris Brown
I Gotta Feeling – BEP
Party Rock – LMFAO
Forever – Chris Brown
Give Me Everything – Pitbull f Ne-yo
Just Dance – Lady Gaga
Anything Michael Jackson!

Bride & Groom
We Found Love – Rihanna
Firework – Katy Perry
DJ Got Us Falling In Love – Usher f Pitbull
Moment for Life – Nikki Minaj
OMG – Usher

CAKE CUTTING
Sweetest Thing – U2
Ice Cream – Sarah McLaughlin
Sugar Sugar – The Archies
How Sweet It Is – James Taylor

FIRST DANCE
Pehli Nazar Mein – Race
You Got A Way – Shania Twain
The Way You Look Tonight – Frank Sinatra
My Chere Amour – Stevie Wonder
Unthinkable – Alicia Keys
If I Ain’t Got You – Alicia Keys

MEHNDI

In serious Bollywood movie style, the mehndi celebration at Chomu Palace was one to remember.  Flower strings hanging from the trees, fountains, mehndi stations and stunning floral designs on the ground, the setup team worked overnight to pull together the perfect look for the morning mehndi.  As the guests arrived, they were greeted by authentic Rajestani folk dancers who performed to the drummers and got the dancing started.

Our mehndi favourites: a live tarot card and palm reader and a “choose your own bangle” station that was arranged to allow the guests to pick bangles to match their outfits!

CEREMONY

In North America, the grandest baraat we do would have an elephant and possibly a live band.  In Jaipur the baraat is incomplete without adding two horses and two camels to start things off!  As stunning as this was, it didn’t compare to the poolside ceremony we had at Samod Palace.

Our ceremony favourites: fresh tropical juices served by the wait staff during the ceremony and lounge areas setup near the mandap for the close family to relax on

RECEPTION

Back at Chomu Palace, there really was no need for any décor, the beautiful courtyard within the palace was better than any set designer could have put together.  Our bride and groom entered to a huge applause as the guests celebrated their last night in wedding paradise.

Our reception favourites: live fireworks as the bride and groom cut their cake and the DJ killing it with Deadmau5.  Seriously, Deadmau5 in India – sick.

Our next proposed destination wedding location – Shiv Vilas, Jaipur (http://www.shiv-vilas.com/).  Call us if you’re interested…

The birth of Sapna Weddings was based on an observation of an obvious need in the South Asian market.  Our weddings span several days, are rich in culture and customs and typically consist of 500+ guests – how could there not be a service dedicated to helping make this process easier?

We are now very proud to announce the launch of ELITE by Sapna Weddings.  ELITE offers a very high end level of service that truly plans the entire wedding and pre wedding functions for the couple and their families.  By eliminating all of the legwork involved in planning a wedding, ELITE is an option for couples who live far away from the city they are marrying in, have extremely busy work or school schedules or are looking for luxurious full service wedding production.

ELITE strives to create an experience that can allow for a bride to “just show up” at the wedding and not worry about creating invitation labels, putting together guest favours, taking care of out of town guest needs, etc.  Having luxurious service doesn’t mean you need to have a luxurious wedding, ELITE is designed to appeal to all types of brides with all different types of visions (or no vision at all!) – whether it’s a dream wedding at the Four Seasons or a fun and intimate affair with your closest friends and family, we are for every type of bride needing the ultimate level of wedding support.

www.sapnaweddings.com/elite

How about we go outside the typical Indian wedding colours and surprise out guests with something different?   Below are some my FAVE colour trends for 2012 – and they are only trends because we are going to make them trends!

NOTE: The colour combos below are a mix of what I have seen in the past and my own creative eye.  I wrote out this entire post and then decided to add pics to help you visualize.  Pics are pulled from various websites, enjoy!

1. Taupe / Blush Pink / Pearl – on the softer side of things, super elegant and understated.  Picture taupe table cloths, pearl napkins on mirrored charger plates with white and shades of light pink flowers for the centre

2. Mustard / Grey / White – a little bolder and more gender neutral, perfect for a fall wedding.  I envision grey table cloths, white napkins, mustard flowers made from wool mixed with white fresh flowers, custom table numbers with white background, grey fancy order and mustard numbering.  Now let’s say Mustard is just not your taste and you are having a hard time finding things that match – easily replace with red and you have a STUNNING colour combination and tons of options for flowers

3. Teal / Orange / White – very fresh and it pops!  Look for white chiavari chairs, white table cloths, teal napkins and orange flowers in a teal vessel, super summery!  Feel free to sub the orange with yellow or coral

I could go on forever, I haven’t even touched on olive, dusty gold or mauve (not together of course!).  Ok so now a twist to some of our traditional Indian reception colours but playing with how much you use and adding non-customary colours to the mix:

1. Plum / Chartreuse Green / Gold – still giving you the regal feel of the rich tones, add the green to break things up.  Absolute love green spider mums and button mums for the green.  Also cymbidium orchids are gorgeous.  Don’t be afraid to use the green as a table cloth colour for your family tables with purple napkins and gold charger plates.  Now I couldn’t find a true “plum” for the pics, but this will be a good start.  Plum would be closer to a purple/fuchsia tone.

2. Navy Blue / Fuchsia / Light Pink / Cream – use more of the blue and creme with the fuchsia as your tertiary colour and shades of pink flowers for your centrepiece.    Cream table cloths, navy napkins – too light?  Flip the combo.

3. Purple / Pewter / Dusty Aqua –  Picture dark linens (purple or pewter), dusty aqua napkins on silver or glass charger plates witha silver border, multiple shades of blue and purple orchids for the centre piece.

That’s it for now – I promise to write more posts this winter – it takes like 4 hours to put this stuff together

Shivi & Tim

Our breakthrough year within the Sri Lankan community – catering to Sri Lakan brides who didn’t want the typical SL Party Planner .  We completed over twelve Sri Lakan wedding in 2011 and this one was one of our favourites.  We helped Shivi & Tim right from the start, finding the perfect outdoor venue for their wedding, booking all of their vendors and planning a day that started with a Christian church ceremony and ended with a Hindu Tamil ceremony followed by their reception.  A day that showed absolutely no rain in the forecast ended up with surprise rain in the afternoon and a mad dash by our team to make the decision to move the ceremony indoors after the outdoor setup had been completed.  It’s a good thing Shivi & Tim didn’t have to deal with the logisitics but some great support from the decor team and the venue while we re-jigged the flow of the day helped save a would-be disaster.

Sharmi & Bobby

Complete Shivi & Tim’s wedding and wakeup at 500AM the next day for Sharmi & Bobby, another US-based client getting married in TO.  When we met with Sharmi and her parents at the venue about a month before the wedding we really felt the love.  Sharmi’s mom instantly trusted our advice and experience and told us that it made her feel so comfortable to know we were taking care of everything for their family.  We subsequently stopped by the house the week of the wedding to help give some last minute advice and were by her side for the wedding.

Tasha & Thileep

A pure word of mouth client, Tasha & Thileep hired us after a bunch of their friends recommended our services.  What initially started off as solely a logistics/execution contract morphed into more as T&T started to realize the challenges with booking an unconventional venue – The Ontario Science Centre.  An example of a venue that gives you four walls and an empty space, we helped keep our client on track by sourcing and managing all of their venue rentals and staffing needs, all the while saving them $1000 – how can you lose?

Once the venue was booked we began working with vendors to secure the date and hammer out the details.  A lot of time was spent focussing in on decor as Monica had an overall idea of the look and feel but didn’t want to delve into details – she gave us complete creative control – YAY!  We pulled together an amazing all white look for her reception, working with 3 different suppliers to produce one overall look.  Our only constraint was Monica’s family florist who drove us crazy before and on the wedding day (sorry Mon!) but despite this challenge, Monica and Anu were super happy with the way the room looked and spent almost one hour taking pics inside the hall before we opened the doors…

Roli & Shiv

The second wedding in 7 months we had the pleasure of doing for this family!  Loved what was done for their “love seat” – very contemporary and chic.  Also one of the few couples who actually paid attention to wedding stationary – loved the bold and matching seating cards, table numbers, menus, guest favour stickers and donation note

Archna & Neeraj – Eagles Nest/Embassy Grand

Outdoor weddings are not without their challenges – you can never predict the weather, the setup and teardown is much more complicated and the rain plan is never as nice, nevertheless A&N took their chances and ended up with a gorgeous day at Eagle’s Nest Golf Course.  The setup was simple, yet elegant and the grey clouds cleared just as the ceremony began.  We also chose this wedding b/c we really liked our bride Archna .  A self-admitted stressball, Archna was cool as a cucumber as we put together an event she could only dream of.

Cassandra & Ravi Jr – Crystal Fountain

Man oh man, Cass, you killed us.  An intense wedding is an understatement for this 2 day affair that boasted one of the larger decor budgets we have seen.  Like nothing we had seen before, the debut of the “framed mandap” and reception “water bar” made this an affair to remember – not to mention the constant shifts and changes to decisions throughout the day, we were making adjustments all the way through but the guests didn’t even notice!

Heena & Dilbagh – Pearson

A big, fat Punjabi wedding!  Haven’t seen a fresh look like this in a while – water, trees, curly cues!  Totally different and totally unconventional – just like Heena

Salwa & Jeff – Palais Royale

One of the first clients who signed us 2 years before their wedding, we helped S&J space out their planning so that it was a stress-free process for them both as Salwa traveled the globe!  From finding the perfect venue to selecting the best vendors to fit their style and budget, it was a smooth couple of years with a fantastic result.

Ravina & Herman

Had a Sikh reception with 200 guests.  Need I say more?  A cocktail style reception in a very unique location, it was the reception that many couples dream of but can never plan because their families need to invite everyone they have ever met.  Kudos to R&H for managing their guest count and pulling off an event that was all party, no fluff.

Arika & Ajay

Our first wedding at the Montreal Science Centre – wow.  Located in Old Montreal, sitting right on the edge of the water, the Belvedre Room at the MSC is a gorgeous floor to ceiling window venue.  Now, renting a space that only provides you with 4 walls is a logistical mission, dealing with rentals, servers, caterers and 3 different decor vendors all working to pull the event together, but it was a challenge we were up to, especially for our bride who was one of THE SWEETEST brides we have ever met!

Priya & Jayshan

Priya came to us 1.5years ago with one request, she needed to have the traditional wedding but wanted to create something unique in every aspect of the decor, venue, food and entertainment.  We did just that to find vendors who could meet her high expectations.  P&J’s wedding had a plexiglass mandap, 450 ice chivari chairs, a silk acrobat performance the likes of Cirque du Soliel and a 40ft long dessert table.  Yup, definitely in the running for wedding of the year.

Majority of the time the lateness in choosing a location is because couples just don’t know where to go.  We often defer to the photographer to help but have found that even they are not always the best resource in offering suggestions – they are very busy making memories for our couples

So here is a teaser of our personal research on spots around the city to go for your post ceremony or pre reception photos.  Now, we haven’t been to all of these places but I figure this is a great place for someone to start their research.  Looking for more ideas?  Give us a shout!

EAST END TORONTO

-          Scarborough Bluffs

-          Guildwood Park

-          Beaches

NORTH TORONTO

-          Unionville Main St

-          Too Good Pond

-          Richmond Greens

-          Black Creek Pioneer Village

-          Kleinburg Railway Station

DOWNTOWN TORONTO

-          St. Lawrance Market

-          Distillery District

-          Casa Loma

-          Berekley Church

-          TD Centre

-          U of T campus  – Hart House

-          York University – Osgoode Hall

-          Don Valley Brickworks

-          Spadina House

-          Edward Gardens

WEST TORONTO

-          James Gardens

-          Humber Arboretum

-          Mississauga City Hall

-          Chinguacousy Park

-          Kariya Park

-          BAPS Swaminarayan Mandir

If you enjoyed this post, check out some of our other ones on the blog!  If you’re looking for some help, please give us a call or email us at info@sapnaweddings.com.

With wedding season approaching, I get a ton of questions from my brides on cakes.  Do I even need a cake?  How do you choose a good wedding cake vendor?   What makes a good cake?  Let me first start with a cake story which emphasizes the importance of an experienced cake vendor.

Common Misconception – candles too close can melt a cake – WRONG!

This happened during a reception of ours and some of the family members thought the candles around the cake were causing the problem.  Take a look at the pictures below, there were votive candles set up around the cake, but weren’t lit.  Candles cannot melt a cake into tipping, the only thing that can cause a cake to tip over is poor construction.

We interviewed some of the city’s most experienced cake makers including Roxy from Roxycakes & Diana Shin from Papillon Cakes to see what they had to say.  “The internal structure of a cake has to be solid and sound, similar to a house.  The construction must be done with  wooden or heavy duty plastic dowels in order for it to support the rest of the cake”, said Roxy from Roxycakes.  “If a cake’s structure shifts after it has been put together, there is no way you can attribute that to candles.  Candles will not shift the structure of a cake, the only thing that can do that is if the cake is poorly made”, said Diana.

When this cake was taken apart to serve, we found that the cake was not held together with dowels but with straws!   Needless to say, this was not one of our recos!

What should your cake look like?

1. A cake is a part of your wedding décor – it’s in the front of the room, should match you theme/décor and is in a lot of pictures so it has to look good!
2. Consider the height of the ceilings in your venue – the higher the ceilings, the taller your cake should be
3. Cakes made with fondant are the most popular these days.  Fondant icing is the smooth icing that goes on cakes and lasts longer than buttercream icing which look a little messier and can also melt

What should your cake taste like?

1. There are so many fun flavours – consider Cookies & Cream, Ferrero Rocher, Passion Fruit and Banana Cream Pie
2. The cake must be moist, bouncing back and not crumbling on your fork

What makes a good cake vendor?

1. Experience – look for someone that has been doing wedding cakes for minimum 3 years
2. Quality Ingredients – fresh butter, fresh cream, no artificial flavours
3. Creative ideas – work with your vision or if you don’t have one, help with you develop a concept based on your colour scheme and overall look and feel

What if I don’t like or want a cake?

1. Consider a macaroon tower
2. Cupcakes
3. Extensive dessert spread
4. Something more fun like a Tiny Tom Donut cart or an ice cream cart