This is a to-die-for, drop dead gorgeous, over the top Indian wedding straight off the Bollywood Big Screen. Apparently the British royals have nothing on this glamorous pair! Set in Thailand, complete with genuine Bollywood guest stars this visual feast could rival any big budget blockbuster. Enjoy.
Nisha & Jiten – A Magical Journey – Hua Hin, Thailand from MILI GHOSH (http://in-motionstud on Vimeo.
Gail Simmons, food writer and judge of Bravo’s Top Chef, recently shared her proposal story in the publicity for her new book “Talking With My Mouth Full.” Thanks to Gail, and to Glamour Magazine for the excerpt. Enjoy!
My parents have been married for more than 45 years. So you can imagine how overjoyed they were when Jeremy eventually proposed.
One of Jeremy’s and my favorite neighborhood restaurants in August 2007 was, appropriately enough, called August and was located around the corner from our apartment.
The chef at the time was a young guy named Tony Liu. In the tiny universe that is the culinary world, he’d worked for Daniel Boulud just before I was there, and then for Mario Batali at Babbo.
We ate dinner at August on occasion, but it was their weekend brunch that we especially loved. Jeremy and I would sit in the glassed-in courtyard and linger over coffee on lazy Saturdays, eating whatever creation Tony and his wood-fired oven would dream up for us. There was always some sort of baked eggs with chorizo, or basil and fresh tomato sauce, fluffy German pancakes with black currants, delicate gravlax with soft scrambled eggs and dill. Tony would make golden hash browns the size of hockey pucks that would sit up in the window of the kitchen, and it was all I could do not to grab them as I was walking to our table. Tony’s menu highlighted regional specialties from all over Europe, from house-made Irish corned beef to Spanish calcots (wild spring onions often blackened on an open fire and served with romesco sauce).
My favorite was his Welsh rarebit: hearty dark rye toast slathered with a sauce made from cheddar, strong mustard, and ale, served with a fried egg on top and a side of cornichons. How could it not be? Mustard is my favorite condiment. Eggs are my favorite food. Cheese — obviously. Beer — adds bite. It’s in my personal Food Hall of Fame.
I’d been traveling through California for 10 days — from LA to San Francisco, and for several days to Sonoma for an event with the “Top Chef” Season 2 winner, Ilan Hall — and returned home on a Friday night exhausted. We had dinner … and drank a bottle or two of wine. I was so tired that I collapsed into bed without washing the makeup off my face.
I woke up the next morning and remember feeling so grateful that I had nothing to do for a whole weekend. In my half sleep, I rolled over to nuzzle under Jer’s arm and I hit something. I thought it was the phone or the TV remote, and I batted it away. Then I opened my eyes.
Jeremy was wide awake. His eyes were huge and alert. I looked down and saw that in the bed beside me was a small box. He started talking nervously. Words were falling out of his mouth. I barely even heard what he said. I opened the box and there was a ring. I was in such shock, I blurted, “No!” from surprise.
“No?” he said, startled.
“No! I mean, yes!” I said. “Yes! Yes!” I cried, still disoriented from sleep, and put the ring on my finger. It was so beautiful and feminine and perfect. I looked up at him, happy, and he started to laugh.
“What?”
“You might want to look at yourself.”
I went to the bathroom and saw black streaks of mascara running down my face; my hair was sticking up at all angles.
I cleaned myself up, went back to bed, and he said, “Don’t move. Just stay here.”
We lay in bed, beaming, for a little while and then the doorbell rang.
“I’ll get it,” I insisted, putting on my bathrobe.
When I opened the door, there was a man standing outside with a huge box. I took it from him and it almost knocked me down, it was so heavy. Inside was a full breakfast delivery straight from Tony at August. Since they have a wood-burning stove, they cook everything in cast-iron skillets. They hadn’t transferred anything into to-go containers. Instead, they had just piled the skillets into this box and had it couriered over. There was my beloved Welsh rarebit, and so many other treats, enough food for at least three meals. We made it last the whole day, laid out like a picnic on our living room floor.
Twenty minutes later, the doorbell rang again. Two deliverymen arrived bearing vases full of flowers; huge peonies, dahlias, roses, and hydrangeas. They lasted for days.
(blogger’s note- Just goes to show, all good stories end with lots and lots of flowers).
Excerpted from the book Talking With My Mouth Full by Gail Simmons. Copyright (c) 2012 GMS Media Inc. Published by Hyperion. Available wherever books are sold.
You’ll see stories from time to time about a couple who had an unexpected guest show up at their wedding – but not in such a bad way. If your uninvited plus one or two is a celebrity, somehow that turns a nightmare into a crazy, fun wedding memory. There’s a couple who had Justin Bieber and Selena Gomez come strolling down the beach into their tented reception, and then a lovely English couple who found the cast and crew of “The Iron Lady” attending their ceremony. (At least Meryl Streep is well raised – she brought a gift).
But by far, this weekend’s instance of a celeb turning up unexpected (though not uninvited) is one that will be tough to top. This couple invited Queen Elizabeth to their wedding as a bit of a lark, never expecting her to come. Indeed, they received a polite decline. But lo and behold, on wedding day, Her Majesty and Prince Philip dropped by to wish the couple well. Now that’s a crash to end all crashes! And such a cute hat, too.
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Just goes to show, you’ve got to think outside the stationery box. Want The Clintons at your wedding? Cher? Send the invitation. You never know who’s going to take you up on it. But that also goes for people who get the “obligatory invitations” that you might rather not see.
The take-away: don’t send an invitation to people you can’t stand OR that are beyond your social circle thinking “they’ll never come” because they just might surprise you. Good advice all around, if it’s applied to Barry Manilow, or Uncle Eugene. You’re rolling the dice, and you might end up with a floorshow, but you’re also risking a monologue about the war years in Moldavia.
Be well, and love well!
Dinah
