First comes love then comes...

Shincy and I are now moving into our fourth month of being together. A lot has happened in the last month. The main thing is marriage. We have gone from just talking about it to planning it officially. Even though we are not engaged yet and I haven't proposed yet we have already planned a day for the engagement party. On August 21, 2010 we will have 150 of our closest friends and family to celebrate the coming of our marriage.

I have always found myself to be rebellious toward tradition and cultural requirements. When I was younger I didn't want a big wedding or engagement party. I really didn't even want an Indian wedding. It looks to be impossible to escape this though. I am Indian and the girl that I am marrying wants a traditional event. Also our families have their input as well as to what they want. We looked at halls for the engagement already and when we went in for our appointment we told them 100. When talking a month back we really wanted between 75-100 of o closest friends/family. If you don't get invited to the engagement you can come to the wedding where we were always planning on having 300 people.

We put together a list of all the people we want to invite for the engagement and we are already up to 190 people. My mom gave me a list of people we have to invite from the church and because of our number I have to cut off some of my friends and her friends from it. I was talking to my best friend Phil last night and he said that this engagement is about me and Shincy. I don't really interact to much with the people from my church and I should be inviting the people who had a real impact on my life first before moving onto people from my church. What I will probably end up doing is putting all my friends and family on there and giving my mother a number of about 20-25 people that she can invite to the engagement and let her choose who she wants to invite.

This is only the engagement so far. We still have to pick a hall for the wedding and start getting our arrangements for that. Shincy wants to go to India before the end of the year. She will take about 10 days to go and do all her shopping. My mom wants me and her to go as well to deal with any prewedding stuff we have to take care of. We have to visit family and get blessings from my relatives and visit my dad's burial location. I just really don't want to go and I've made it pretty obvious to her that I won't be going. She will be persistent and quite possibly convince me to go.

Our wedding expenses are going to be big. We are planning on having a budget of 6000 for the engagement and 55,000 for the wedding. That's a lot of money. Also I have to buy my engagement ring, plan a honeymoon and pay for any expenses related to us living together. I have no idea how much all of that is going to cost us but I know that we will be paying for it for a long time to come.

The good thing about our marriage is that after marriage she will be living with me in my house with my mother and grandma. That will cut back on the cost of having to pay for rent or having to pay for a mortgage. I will have to update my room to accommodate her though. After our engagement in the fall I will probably hire a contractor to pull all of the paneling off my wall, put up new sheet rock, paint everything, and lay down new carpeting. This will probably take a month to do but I have so much stuff in my room I have no idea where I'm going to put it while this is happening. Then we'll have to buy all new furniture for the room so that it'll have enough room for the both of us. She is a girl and as such has a ton of clothing. She's going to need a place to put all that stuff and we're going to have to turn it from a boys room with video games and posters all over the place to that of a married couple.

Converting my room into a a married room means that I have to find a new home for most of my toys. I'll probably end up converting part of the basement into a "mancave". I'll throw my collection of stuff down there, place a TV there with some of my video game systems there and end up having my friends come down here whenever we want to play. I just don't know if I'm going to keep playing my games in my room when I'm alone or move everything down there this way I don't disturb her when I want to play.

My life is about to change big time. I am getting married and as such I will have to adapt to the new climate. I'm a little scared and about to drop a lot of money but in the end this will be good for me. I'll be with the women I love and moving closer to that life I had imagined for myself. As the main character in the movie 3 idiots said when he was nervous. Just tell yourself All Is Well and you'll be just fine.