Vidaaai gifts

Vidaai gift is the gift you give to your guests when they are leaving after attending the wedding. A teeka is applied on their forehead and the gift is given before bidding them a goodbye. The married ladies also get a godi, which is a pouch filled which rice, some money, a turmeric stick, a dry sweet (bataasha) and supari. When it comes to gifts, of course, a lot depends on your budget and who you are giving these gifts to. There are many gift shops in Bairagarh market where you can find items at wholesale rates. They will also gift wrap them for you. If you insist, they will deliver it at your doorstep too (provided you actually order in bulk!)

Like most marriages, we had 2 categories for gifts: Baraatisand Gharaatis. For the Gharaatis (guests from my side), we bought multipurpose boxes (the kinds with 4 compartments in which you can keep dry fruits or mouth fresheners) from RK Distributors in Bairagarh market. We chose not to get the boxes gift wrapped by them for fear that some boxes might have defects and we would not want our guests to receive defective items. This turned out to be a good decision despite the fact that we had to gift wrap 100 such boxes ourselves. About 10 boxes were defective and RK Distributors readily took them back and refunded the money. While buying the boxes, we had even negotiated that we would return any remaining boxes to them (since we were ordering in bulk). They agreed and even though they made the delivery about a week late, all other dealings with them was smooth.

For the Baraatis (guests from the groom’s side), we selected deity idol (murti). We chose murts packed in transparent hard plastic boxes (giving it a look of glass). It is considered auspicious in our family to gift a murti to someone and we could think of nothing better than that to gift to the Baraatis. We bought these from Chhabra Collection in New Market. For the kids, we bought various DIY kits, which I picked up before I left UK (these are also available at Hobby Ideas stores in India).