ANNOUNCEMENT #2

Very important things to note:

-SEQUINS =/= SEQUENCE.
I wish all the desi people of the world would realise this.
Sequins = little shiny things on clothes.
Sequences = stuff arranged in order.

Simple, right? So why do people (girls, mostly - well... I hope) say stuff like 'My dress had all these sequences on it!'. Get it right man! Next time someone says it, I'll- not say anything probably, for fear of sounding like a pedantic ass (again).

I mean, check this out: I could never buy that sari purely because of the badly worded description. And because it's overpriced. And because I never wear saris. But still, the badly worded description had some part to play!

-IDEAR =/= IDEA.
I guess this bugs me a little bit, but I'm just fulfilling a request here :P.

-LADIES ONLY = ONLY LADIES
Aha! What a fiendish puzzle indeed - you're having a mendhi [or equivalent pre-wedding bridal party] of the sort that usually only involved women, mostly girls. You write 'Ladies Only' on the invite. You then proceed to invite the family, making a special effort to verbally ask the males to come too.

This does not make sense to me.

If you want a mixed event, why write 'ladies only' on the card? Or if you want a ladies only event, why ask guys to come too? GET IT RIGHT PLZ.

On the subject of wedding invites: they kind of suck. (At least the ones I get. Well, not me, but my family as a whole. If it was just me, I probably wouldn't get an invite, on account of being a pedantic ass [see above]).

Forget the mis-spellings and unnecessary capital letters. All over the card. It's probably just because they're printed abroad a lot of the time, and foreign people don't get complicated British spellings, whatwhat.

Forget even the tendency to put everything in inverted commas, giving the whole thing a caustically sarcastic feel (caustic and sarcastic... dunno if it made sense, but those two words just had to be together) - you know, like Mr and Mrs X invite you to the "nikah" of their beloved daughter "Y" "insha Allah".

I can even bring myself to overlook the fact that they are frequently addressed to Mr and Mrs Husband's Full Name, as if the Mrs is just some accessory to her Mr and deserves no identity in her own right, having had the misfortune of being born female and having no redeeming features except the identity of the man she married (because, yes, that's exactly what they meant when they addressed the card).

But come on... 'no boxed gifts please'?!

I understand that it could be annoying to get 46 toasters as a wedding present, or having to make trips to the charity shop to get rid of the junk-I-found-in-the-attic-and-wrapped-up presents that some people might give. I understand that fine. But really, you're not entitled to presents, not even the attic junk. It's a gift, you don't get to demand what form it comes in! Saying you don't want it boxed is saying that you expect presents - which you probably do, it's just not polite to say so. And 'no boxed gifts' is meant to be some euphemism for 'give us some damn money already!', which isn't a very nice thought.

Plus, people can still give you attic junk - they could just stick it in a bag. Not technically a boxed gift anymore, see?! In any case, I don't think the attic-junk types pore over their wedding invites, waiting to see who forgot to write that little message, so they can go 'aha! Get down that 1973 cordless electric kettle with the wiring fault, there's finally someone we can give it to!'.

And if you write it on the card, there's always the risk that your millionaire uncle will read it and sadly shake his head, sighing 'here's another happy couple I can't pass this big ole box of money to... my day will come...'.

It could happen.