Our Dubai couple, melanie + creswell (better known as chris) met in college during their uni years in dubai about 9 years back. It was since then their love blossomed like flower. And after 9 long years of relationship, they had decided to have their wedding day exactly on the same date that they started dating which was on 17th Oct 2000, and hence their wedding day 17th Oct 2009!

They both had a mutual agreement to have their church wedding celebration in mumbai, with a bollywood wedding night and roce wedding ceremony prior to their wedding day. And they flew in their friends, family and relatives from Dubai, Chennai, Goa and etc to attend their big days in mumbai!

Mel + Creswell had their Bollywood Night on 15th Oct 09. It is one of the pre-wedding ceremonies that are practiced by the northern indians, and it was also their day-one of pre-wedding party! The entire theme is bollywood night party and everyone was dressed in bollywood attire. Boy, not only was it meant dancing night for them, it was also meant liquor night for all! They had all the liquors and beers ready at the cocktail counter where liquor is free flow… And mel’s bridemaids and friends had prepared many dance performances on stage for their entertainment and we could tell they really choreographed for this night. Until the end of the night, the guests had even pulled us in to join their floor dance!

On the day prior to their wedding day, they had the ROCE ceremony, it was where mel got the blessing from her relatives and friends. This is somewhat different from the southern indians as they (the northern indians) give their blessings to mel by pouring (plus showering) her with coconut milk and eggs! She was not alone, as her bridemaids were there to back her up as well! The fun then get dirtier when it was her friends turn to give their blessings. Mel and the bridemaids were showered with 2 packets full of coconut milk by their close friends!! Pity her and the bridemaids…

Finally, thanks again to mel + creswell to share your love journey with us and here is the premiere of their love story featured on their wedding reception at Hyatt Regency Hotel on Oct 17th…

(Do upload it fully for better viewing… enjoy the video and stay tuned for mel + creswell wedding highlights soon!)

Cheers.

Creswell + Melanie | Mumbai | Bollywood Wedding from Doodle Studio on Vimeo.

A Happy Diwali to all Indians out there!

Yeah, some of you might be wondering where have we been as we have been out of touch for quite some time due to the inconvenience of getting a wireless internet access here in Mumbai. We are all good and having loads of fun here in the ‘Incredible India’! (well, this is actually the tag line for india tourism ‘09!) And we are staying in the same suburb as Shah Rukh Khan, which is the Bandra town! Want to know more? Well, here are what i have summarized out of our past 6 days mumbai journey…

What can we say… it is simply ‘incredible’ of our couple Creswell + Melanie to bring us around the suburb and bandra town during our stay here in mumbai. On day one, we had arranged an outdoor pre-wedding shoot with them within mumbai city and bandra town. Both Creswell + Mel were so spontaneous and sporting with the pre-wed, so much so that they are so natural and loving in front of the cameras. We had several awesome shots by the sea shore along bandra town despite the sunny day. It was really hot and humid, but both mel + creswell did not complaint a tad bit of the weather, yet were so thrilled of the entire shoot! They even had their hands and feet dirty in order to get a nice shot… and the outcome? It was awesomely incredible!

During our shoot, they even introduced us to the local stall food which taste simply delicious. We had the famous ‘dani puri’ where you stuff some ingredients into the crackle and dip it into the soup, and then eat it right away. We learnt that it is one of the local’s favorite and it has since became our favorites too! Apart from that, we even tried our taste bud on the lime juice made by the locals. The lime juice is somewhat different from our local mamak ‘air limau’ as they put the ‘masala’ spice into the juice and make it thrist-quenching on a sunny day! And all of us had two glasses each! And the best part of it is that we could see Shah Rukh Khan residence from the dani puri and lime juice stalls!!! It was just a minute stroll away and we even snapped a photo in front of the gate! Luckily the security guard did not chase us off. lol…  Before we wrapped up the shoot, mel managed to get one of the rickshaw drivers to spare us the ‘classic’ rickshaw for our shoot, more-so-over we have been dying to use it in our shoot as it is the classic icon of mumbai… Well, that was the end of our day-one pre-wed shoot.

After a good rest, we continued our day-two pre-wed shoot at the sanjay gandhi national park. Mel suggested that it would be a really nice place to shoot as contrast to the busy city, whereby it is more natural and it has a waterfall deep inside the forest! Mel knew it so well ‘coz she had spent a good few years in mumbai during her childhood years and she has had fond memories of the national park. True enough, when we got there, we could see what she meant with the nature jungle-ly look and feel as we had to drive a good 15 minutes ride into the jungle-ly park in order to reach the waterfall spot. Unfortunately the waterfall has dried out due to the hot weather, (as it has not been raining since september, we heard..) but we are still lucky to have the ancient caves!!! Yeap, the caves are still in good condition and it was uber-cool to have our shoot there. And the caves are one of the ‘incredible india’ visiting spots as we could see tourists and locals walk and climb their way up to the caves, like we did! It was simply amazing though we had no idea of the historical past of these caves… Well, during our shoot, the locals kept stopping-by to watch and kept thinking we were from international broadcast station! Haha… you will see why i said so in the picture later.