Tag Archives: Wedding

Bhuhari is going to Nepal

Posted on November 9, 2012 | 16 comments

Bhuhari means daughter in law in Nepali.

As per our plan, I have booked my flight to go to Kathmandu, Nepal for mid of December.  I know I have been back form my Europe trip not long ago and l haven’t finished blogging about places we visited in Europe but it has been more than a year since we went to Nepal so, it is a perfect time to go again. We will be using our Christmas and New Year break with our annual leave to accommodate this holiday.

We will be going via Bangkok and will be stopping over for 4 days to do some sightseeing , some shopping and meeting AS’s family . We had been to Thailand before but I will be really nice to go again and meet AS’s new niece. She is so cute.

While in Nepali, my nephew will have his Pasni ceremony as well so we have a celebration and a holiday with our family. My brother, sister in law and nephew will be travelling there before us.

I always like to book my holiday in advance so I can look forward to the day and that keeps me going. I am always very eager to go to Nepal and I am this time as well but I have some fear of all the changes I will face.

This time, going to Nepal will be very different for me than ever before. This will be first time for me to go to my home town as a Bhuhari. It may sound strange in western society but life after marriage for Nepali women is very different than here. Lots of things do change which I haven’t really felt because I am in Australia but that will affect me while I am in Nepal.

Every time, I go to Kathmandu, my parents would come to pick me up at the airport but I am not sure what will happen this time. Because I am meant to go to AS’s house (my new home) from the airport. I am thinking to tell my parents not to come to the airport to receive me as I don’t want them to go home without me but instead am planning to go and visit there on the same day in the evening.

I will have to divide my time between two houses this time and I have no idea how I can manage that easily.

Going to Nepal always meant waking up late, not exercising , being spoilt my parents with yummy food , going out and meeting my friends and relatives, a short break to somewhere with my parents and lots of relaxation.

But I am not too sure I can keep this attitude in my new home.  I think it will be very rude to wake up at 8 am and go to kitchen where my MIL will be preparing breakfast for everyone. We have help but still she likes to do lot of things herself. Don’t get me wrong, as I have mentioned before as well, my MIL is very understanding and caring lady but still I can’t be spoilt the way my mum makes me when I am with her.

I am not too sure how I need to plan my days as there are lots of pending invitation we need to attend this time form AS families’ side. As it is a culture in Nepal to invite newlyweds for dinner after their wedding, we got lot of those invitations after our wedding last year. But as we had only 4 days after the wedding, we declined them and told everyone that we will be visiting them next time when we come back to Kathmandu. That means most of our evenings we’ll be dining out either at AS’s relatives’ house or mine’s.

Even in terms of clothing, I don’t know what I will be expected to wear. Like I mentioned in my post before, married women in Nepal dress differently after their wedding. So I am sure I can’t dress however I want. I don’t really mind wearing Sari and Kurta while I am there but it will be mid-winter so I am not too sure how easy it is going to be. Even a year after the wedding I will be a newlywed buhari so I need to learn all the right manners :).

I am sure with all the confusion and anxiety I am still going to have a great time with my two beautiful families, just thinking about it makes me bit anxious sometimes though. There is still a long time till I land in Kathmandu but I can’t wait to write about my experience and Nepal  from Kathmandu  🙂

16 Comments

Posted in Nepal, Personal, Social Issue

Tagged , , , , ,

I wish I had my own sister too!!!

Posted on August 20, 2012 | 27 comments

The title says it all. I have a brother but I always wanted a sister as well.  I wish I had one even more for the last few years.

As I grew older, I always loved my brother and never thought not having a sister as any disadvantage at all. But for the last few years, I realised that a sister can be your best friend that you can have no matter what happens in life.

Most of the times friends come and go but if I had a sister I would have had her for my life time.

One of the reasons that triggered this thought was because everyone around me had a sister. All my cousins have their own sister and I can see that they are closer now than when they were kids. They share their happiness and sorrow and they know they have this one person in life they can rely on no matter what. I wish I had the same as well.

I felt the pain even more when I went to Nepal to get married. One of my cousins got married before me. She had her sister’s help in every step of her plan till the day she got married. She was her shopping partner and planning partner. They went everywhere together and were always there when she needed a hand. It was so great to see that she was never too stressed as she knew that there was someone she could count on.

After four months of her wedding I went to Nepal to get married. Unfortunately for me as I have no sister, I ended up doing everything for the wedding on my own. And you know from my posts that Nepalese wedding is not a small affair. I didn’t want to bother my parents so I used to be out of the house everyday doing one thing or another. It is not easy in Nepal like it is here. You can’t do things online or over the phone so you have to meet people for every little thing. That time I so wished I had a sister so I would have gotten some help.

I had a few friends who helped me but I couldn’t expect them to take time off from their work to be with me. If I’d had a sister I am sure she would have done that. Thank god everything went as planned and I am really happy that my parents are so happy with me as well.

After a year of my wedding another of my cousins got married. She lives in US but got married in Nepal. Lucky for her, she has a sister as well so everything was perfectly done when she came to Nepal for wedding. She just came a day before the first day of her wedding and everything was all set.

I guess some people are just plain lucky that they get everything in their life so easily while others have to work hard to get anything in life.

I am not even sure what I want to convey with this post but sometimes when I am alone and have a moment for myself, I wonder and think if I had my own sisters like others do, would my life have been better in some aspect.

I have to be thankful that my life is perfectly fine. I am healthy with loving parents and husband. My work is going fine and I am achieving lot of my dreams. But then there are some areas of life that I feel lack something. I feel like I just want to rant sometimes and today it ended up as a blog.

27 Comments

Posted in Family, Personal

Tagged , , , , ,

With love, to my dear husband

Posted on June 24, 2012 | 18 comments

I can’t believe time just flies and that is exactly what has happened to me. I can’t believe that I have been married to my dear husband for a year now. One year, which is 365 days/ 8,760 hours/ 525,600 minutes / 31,536,000 seconds. It looks like so many numbers and it has just passed. The greatest thing of all is that for every second of that, my darling husband was with me.  Today I want to dedicate this post to my dear husband who has supported me and loved me for who I am.

We have come a long way in a year and our love has grown so much in this time. I want to live the rest of our life like this and I am sure we will be celebrating 5 years, 10 years, 25 years, 50 years and then 99 🙂 in future.

Nothing in this world could ever be as wonderful as the love you’ve given me. Your love makes my days so very bright and brings a smile to my face just knowing you’re my darling HUSBAND. Thank you for loving and taking care of me .

Happy 1st Anniversary my love.

We are celebrating the day with our close friends and family. I will have more updates in my next post. Please click here if you have missed our wedding posts.

You may also like :

*From independent, confident strong women to dependent, needy wife *A Nice Suprise  *Making a cup of tea…

18 Comments

Posted in Marriage

Tagged , , ,

What’s in the name (Surname)?

Posted on September 22, 2011 | 9 comments

It has been exactly 90 days we have been married. 🙂

The day I announce my wedding at work, one of my colleague asked me “So you will change your surname, what’s it gonna be?” The question caught me off guard as I haven’t thought about it at all. Taking your husband’s name is the traditional option (especially in Nepal) but we never discuss it. I am sure both our family expect me to take it but I was in no rush. I have seen my friends change their surname in Facebook the day they got married (I am not sure if they have done legally too) or have used both surnames but I have always thought it can wait few years. Many women will say that their husbands/in-laws  wanted them to change their surname. So they did.

I am not against changing surname if you want to as I also want to do it before we have kids. I am planning to be MJS, mine surname followed by his.  My friend AS is the reason, I will defiantly do it before we have baby as I don’t want to go through the same path as hers.

AS decided not to change her surname when she married CJ (Nepali guy). When they have a baby girl, her mother in law came to visit her in hospital. While she was holding her new grand-daughter, she was shocked to see the tag called her, Baby S instead of Baby J. She made sure AS knows, she didn’t approve of that. But in the birth certificate, hospital wrote baby S as per mother’s surname as well. Because it was in birth certificate, they thought it will be easy to use the same surname in other official documents as well .Now the baby and mum have same surname and dad has different. It created lots of confusion in all the legal documents and I don’t want to go through that.

Back to my situation, I am planning to keep my surname until I can as I want to avoid the hassle of alerting everyone and going through all the paper work right now. Its not  easy to change the name on everything from your driver’s licence to your library card. I know I have to do it one day but mentally I am not ready right now. The most annoying change will be for my passport. I love my passport as it has so many stamps and visas I collected travelling over the years. It is like a story to me and has high sentimental value. Once I change my passport, I will lose all my memory.

All this question is coming right now because my in-laws made official document in Nepal(Relationship certificate) and they send us a copy in case we need it. In that document, they have my name as MS not MJ. My in-laws have never asked me to change it but I think they didn’t as by default in their mind, I am MS not MJ but I want to be MJS in future not MS. 

When I talk to AS about it, he thinks it is normal of his parents to think I am MS now as that in what happens in Nepal. I haven’t changed my Facebook name either (I know it is easy but …) I want to do it in my own pace and I hate it if anyone forces me to do it. He knows what I am planning and he is ok with that but of course he can’t control what his parents think.

Just want to put it out there” Am I allowed to wait until I am ready to change the surname or it is expected to change straight after marriage, especially in Nepali culture?”

9 Comments

Posted in Nepal, Nepali Culture, Relationship

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Big, Loud, Crowded, Nepali wedding

Posted on September 16, 2011 | 4 comments

Around three years ago, I decided to get married. From that day, I have dreamt of having a very big traditional Nepali wedding. I know every girl dreams to fall in love with their prince charming and have the biggest celebration possible, and I was no different.

There is a special reason why I mentioned 3 years. It is because before that I always thought marriage, especially Nepali traditional marriage, are made only so that men can transfer the job of cooking, cleaning and looking after them from their mothers to their wives.

I am not a feminist but I hate to be one of those wives so I decided that not getting married was the easiest way out. I even told my decision to my parents and they constantly tried to changed my mind. They always gave me all the reasons why marriage is good for me.

Growing up I was a tomboy with lots of male friends. I always found it is easy to make friends with boys than be with a bunch of girls. I do have some really good female friends but I was never a part of the girl group. Hanging out with boys was more fun and I was learning how to ride motorbike and how to play pool.

But things changed slowly when I came to Australia. I started liking dresses to pants and let my hair grow. I still remember my dad’s reaction when he saw me for the first time when I went back to Nepal for the first time after four years. I think seeing me with big earrings and in a dress made him realise that I was no longer a tomboy who had left Nepal four years ago. His exact words were “My daughter has grown up”.

Around 2006, I started getting invitations from my friends for their wedding. I used to ask them how they knew “he/she” was the one. They told me , they were happy with this person  they have married. Even though marriage is not a piece of cake but it isn’t bad either. The weddings I went to were between Nepali – Indonesian, Nepali – Fiji Indian, Nepali – Pilipino, Nepali – Aussie, Nepali – Italian, or Nepali – Nepali. No matter who they were marrying ,one thing was common , they were all in love and extremely happy to be married.

Most of my close friends got married which meant that I was now hanging out with couples. Then I saw what was missing in my life. I saw the care and love they had for each other. They still had arguments, they still disagreed with each other on some things but at the end of the day, they cared for each other and they loved each other.

I wanted the love and care that you can only get from your partner. I liked the thought that “You are no longer alone and there is always someone looking after you.” When I was sure of what I wanted, I called my parents and let them know my decision. I think that was one of the best days of their life as they had been worried sick that I would end up as an old and miserable spinster.

Fast forward two years and I was in the middle of the chaos of my own wedding celebration. Almost a year of preparation from both the families, a few changes to the wedding dates, a twenty man band, almost 2000 guests, 10 day long celebrations and finally me and AS were getting married. It was loud, it was crowed, it was chaotic but I didn’t mind that. I was actually enjoying it. With the blessing of both the families and all our relatives and friends, we got married. One thing I learnt from this experience is that “marriage is not just about two people but it is about two families” – At least, it is in Nepal.

4 Comments

Posted in Nepal, Our Wedding, Wedding

Tagged , , , , , , , , ,