My Favorite Bride

This is Raschika, a friend that was made on my first day in preschool, who was there with a smiling face at my first dance class and then stood next to me in every dance class for the next 12 years, and the girl who became one of our family and who helped my sisters and I create and perform exciting shows, the Sound of Music always being a huge hit :). We also planned our future together, as many little girls do, making lists while we lay belly down on the floor, heads together. Those lists had diagrams even, and included a coffee shop (very tribal and cool :) we were to open one day, and eventually an import/export business sharing the one of a kind South African collectibles and clothing designers with my part of the world. And then finally, we dreamt of the arts and actually putting our outstanding and painful dance training to some good use. This one, amazingly enough, happened after I had left her and moved with my family to the other side of the world. We still had a future in common. Raschika was my shopping soul mate and had the best clothes of anyone I knew. She inspired my love of fantasy and especially faerie (there are some places that would make anyone fall in love with faeries! Places where they serve heart shaped waffles with your tea as you delicately perch yourself at tiny table inside a hollow tree.) And she showed me that it's fun to be unique, to appreciate what others might not, and that it's best to stand out in a crowd.

These pictures are of Raschika on her wedding day. I don't know as many details as I would like to, but what I can tell you is this. One of our favorite foreign films is "Monsoon Wedding", something we saw long before Bollywood became the rage. She wore a more traditional white wedding gown for the ceremony and then changed into an Indian gown for the reception (it is common to change for the reception in SA). Only my Chika could have looked so beyond breathlessly gorgeous in this dress. It deserves to be on a dress form in her home, displayed for the daily ooh and aahs. Oh, but now she has a toddler in charge of that castle and so maybe a dress form is not the best idea. Nevertheless, bravo!