Yet another case of ignorance and stupidity was reported within the South Asian community this week. 

Chaudry Rashad

Sandeela Kanwal, a victim of her own father’s wrath, was killed by her father, Chaudry Rashad, because she refused to continue the marriage with her arranged husband, whom she hadn’t seen for several months.  Reporters refer to Chadry’s actions an “honor killing”, but we can’t comprehend how any honor can be upheld with these types of actions.

Here is an excerpt from the ABC news article, posted online:

A Georgia father (Chaurdry Rashad) of Pakistani descent allegedly strangled his 25-year-old daughter because she wanted to get out of an arranged marriage to a man she had not seen in months, according to police in Clayton County, Ga.

The Clayton County Medical Examiner confirmed that Kanwal died of strangulation. Police recovered an iron by the young woman’s bedroom doorway and a necklace on a family room table that may have been used in the killing, according to a Clayton County police report.

Authorities allege that Rashid killed his daughter because he feared that her resistance to a recently arranged marriage would disgrace the Pakistani-American family.

This is sure to spark lots of controversy within our community.  Now days, arranaged marriages are on the downtrend and divorce is on the uptrend.  Generation X South Asians are developing into a western culture, and the traditional South Asian views are becoming almost non-existent for many South Asian youth within the US and UK. 

Why is it so hard for first generation immigrants (as well as native South Asians) to understand that times are changing and that arranged marriages are not as successful or feasible as before?  We do understand that the stats show that arranged marriages are highly effective, but it can also be argued that there is no “honor” in forcing an arranged marriage.  We are living in a free world, and as an adult, the choice should come from the individual, not the parents.

Do you think it is “dishonorable” to break an arranged marriage?  How can we better handle these situations within our community?

We all know that Indian Desi Weddings and Receptions cost a FORTUNE!  We recently read an article about an Indian wedding in Dallas that costed over $750,000…whoa! 

Nowadays in the US, however, fathers of the beautiful brides are finding, to their dismay, that spending so much money on a wedding reception is not a wise decision…especially because so many Indians and desis are getting divorced!  There goes Daddy’s $750K down the drain…and probably doesn’t leave much room for the next marriage…

Unfortunately, divorce is plaguing the Indian community more than it ever has in the past.  Second generation Indians and Desis are splitting up more than those chapped lips of yours.  So we ask, why spend so much money on an extravagent wedding celebration when you don’t even know if these two brown lovebirds are going to even have brown eggs together?  Receptions and Celebrations should be EARNED, right?

Therefore, we the SABAsearch Blog staff is proposing to install something called the “10 year Later” Wedding Reception into the Indian Desi Community.  If your daughter is about to get married, tell her that she can spend daddy’s hard earned money after 10 years for a wedding celebration under the following conditions:

• She is still happily married to her husband
• She still allows the parents to invite over 1000 brown people that nobody knows…because its the “desi tradition”

Your new wedding invitations would look something like this:

The “10 Year Later” Wedding Reception idea is now available for usage…enjoy!  We have lots of desi wedding coordinators standing by on the SABAsearch Blog hotline to help you get started.

My family and I just came back from Dallas for my cousin’s wedding. We have a pretty large family so it’s always fun to get together for family functions. My brother is “of marriage age” but currently not married and not really in any rush to do so. But, being typical Indians, the question of marriage is the main topic. “So, when are you getting married” is a common question that was asked throughout the weekend. Since we were at a wedding, the best line was “So when are we going to do this for you”! We decided to tally how many times he would get asked that over the weekend… the number turned out the be 15! I know they have the best intentions in mind, but why is that such a prominent topic in our society? Being the younger brother, it was actually entertaining for me to watch! Do ya’ll have any horror stories on this topic to share?

We received this letter in from one of our readers yesterday:

Dear SABAsearch Blog,

I just got finished with my wedding recently, and I want to let everyone know how frustrated I am with the entire process due to the rigid nature of most of our wedding vendors.  My fiance and I worked so hard to earn enough money to have the perfect wedding, and some of our wedding vendors did a great job of screwing it all up! I am not one to complain, but I wanted to send you guys my thoughts so your other readers can prevent this from happening to them.

First, the wedding hall we booked called us a WEEK before the wedding to let us know that we could not have the event at their facility (due to some city violations).   We had a horrible time arguing with them and tried to have them place us in a new facility, but they said their contract does not require them to do so.  How rude!??  So lesson 1:  Make sure you clearly work out the terms with your wedding facility for these types of situations.  Make sure they are held responsible for re-placing you if there is an unexpected reason you cannot use their facility.

We were forced to use the only venue that was available (we only had 2 weeks left!).   The place was extremely beautiful, and we had a great time, but at the end of the event, we were informed that we would not receive all of our deposit back!  We met all of their so-called guidelines, and even had our hired staff clean their restrooms, but they found some weird reasons to keep our deposit.  Lesson 2:  Make sure you clearly understand the terms for the deposits to the facility!  It is an easy way for the venues to take more money from you!

Our final problem was with our decorators.  They came late and didn’t bring enough people.  Therefore, my uncles and aunts were helping them finish the decorations in their saris and suits!  They didn’t even offer a discount for their faults.  Lesson 3:  Go with a reputable company.  Small time shops are not reliable and do not have enough staff to support your event.  Make a list of every single item they are suppose to bring, and don’t pay them until every item has been checked.

OK, enough of being a debby downer… I do want to be fair and aknowledge the folks who made us extremely happy and did a GREAT job at our event!  The following wedding vendors saved the day because they went above and beyond to make sure our wedding was as spectacular as we had dreamed!  If you are still in the middle of your wedding planning, make sure you at least touch base with these Houston wedding vendors…

A&A Video - On time, great service, and our video turned out amazing;  713-772-6899;  Ask for Imran
Joe Cogliandro Photography - Super nice, great creativity, and amazing pictures!  Great with Desi weddings.  832-859-1982;  Ask for Joe
India’s Restaurant - Great Service, All our guests love the food, great staff!  713-266-0131;  Ask for Satish
DJ Rpan - Kept the dancefloor jumpin’ till 2am!  Great Bhangra music and mixes!  Brought a great dhol player too!
Mira Slavo - This one gets the most stars!  Amazing serving staff and cleaning crew at affordable rates!  Idefinitely recommend her staff for people who are having events in privately owned venues in Houston and need their own bar/cleaning/wait staff;  Really professional and super nice!  832-495-3451

Hope this helps!  And best of luck to all of the couples who are currently planning their wedding! 

Sincerely,
DesiBride08

Note from SABAsearch:  If you are looking for other desi wedding vendors in Houston, please visit the SABAsearch Wedding Portal

Many friends of the SABAsearch.com team as well as some of our very own have just embarked on the hardest mission of their lives:  planning a desi wedding!  After speaking with them a little bit more about what’s involved, we came to the conclusion that desi weddings in Houston = a Monster Market for Houston wedding vendors.

Think about it, each person we’ve talked to is estimating to spend anywhere from $25,000 to $100,000 on their special day or days.  That’s insane!  Somebody is getting really rich off of the Desis in Houston.  (probably also hoping that we get married 3 times over!)

So, with such a huge spending power within this market, our teams wanted to find out if the wedding vendor market in Houston is flourishing as it should be.  And YES, it is!

More and more desi wedding vendors are popping up left and right within the Houston area.  And don’t worry, there’s enough money to go around for all of them…even the bad ones!

Lets do the math….there are 52 weekends in a year…with at least 4 desi weddings on each of those weekends…and each wedding costing about $75,000 in total.  With these numbers, we’re looking at an $18M market.  Again, insane!

So for all you folks looking for a business to get into…we recommend the wedding market.  Don’t be surprised if you see SABAsearch.com Wedding Planners in the next few months :)  j/k.

Here are some Wedding Vendors we highly recommend in the Houston area.  These vendors have all received strong feedback via the SABAsearch.com website and have had consistent satisfied customers within the South Asian Community in Houston.  Enjoy!

Clear Concept Media - Audio/Video setup
A&A Video - Videography Services
Joe Cogliandro - Photography Services
SNBT Diamonds - Wedding Rings/Engagement Rings
Heartbeats - Live Band & Entertainment
Nu Trend Party Rental and Decorations - Event Decorations

To view more Desi wedding vendors in Houston, check out the SABAsearch.com Wedding Portal, which contains comprehensive listings of all your wedding vendor needs. 

Please share your recommended wedding vendors with everyone by a posting a reply to this blog article. 

Below is a note we received from one of our readers.

So I’m getting married very soon and I did not realize how much goes into a South Asian wedding. There is so much to cover. I’m not too much of a procrastinator, but I’m finding myself with more to do with less time! Everything is manageable, but to me (26 year old male), a lot of these things that need to be done are very much overkill… I understand that it’s important to my fiancé and our parents, but is it worth breaking the bank over?
Outside of everything else, why do we (our community) feel the need to invite the entire world to our weddings? My parents and my fiancés parents both want to invite old friends that we probably haven’t seen in ages! I understand the idea that our parents came here with nothing and they relied on each other to survive in America, but after their children get married, it looks like they’ll be back to nothing again! I hope they can rally together and start from scratch again!
For the people that recently got married or soon to be married or even if you’ve been married for years, any comments or advice that you’d like to share?

Sincerely,
Engaged and Confused

Dear Engaged and Confused,
Let me assure you that you are not the only one to have had this problem. In fact, I don’t know of anyone that has not had this problem. Wedding planning is always a stressful experience, but remember the greater picture at hand. The wedding will come and go, but the marriage will last forever. You should be spending more time planning your marriage than your actual wedding. With that in mind, try not to forget where your parents are coming from. In the South Asian culture, weddings are the highlight of many parents’ lives. They want everyone to take part in their happiness. But, there needs to be a balance. You and your fiancé need to make a compromise with the parents and come to an agreement that will make both of you happy. Both sides will probably not be 100% happy, but that is better than one party being more than the other. We wish your families the best of luck and hopefully any insights provided here will be helpful.