Two months before the wedding: when your lehenga should begin
Every week, a bride calls us a fortnight before her wedding. We can often help her — but I want to tell you what the calendar looks like when it’s done properly.
A hand-embroidered bridal lehenga takes our studio four weeks at most, start to finish — the discussion and sketch, the cloth, the design, the Khatli hand embroidery, the trials and the delivery, all of it. The calendar below adds time for thinking on top, because deciding is the part nobody budgets for. Here it is, counted backwards from your wedding day.
Eight weeks out — discussion, planning and the sketch
This is when the best work happens. Come to the studio, or call us if you're abroad. Bring photographs you love, or bring nothing — some of our best pieces began with a bride saying only "I don't want to look like everyone else." We talk about your functions, your venue, the jewellery you've inherited, and the colours that live well on you.
Six weeks out — cloth and design selection
You'll choose the cloth against the sketch, and you'll hold embroidery samples in your hands. A photograph cannot tell you how gota patti catches light or how heavy real zardozi feels on silk. The samples decide everything.
Four weeks out — the Khatli hand embroidery
Your lehenga is stretched on the adda frame and the karigars begin. We send progress photographs — many brides tell us these become their favourite part of the whole wedding, watching it grow stitch by stitch.
The trials
The garment on your body for the first time, pinned and corrected. Wear the shoes you'll wear at the wedding, and bring your mother — you'll want her there.
Final delivery — for the best day of your life
Final adjustments, steaming, and a box that will travel safely to your venue. Done. No panic, no compromises, no "it will be ready, madam" phone calls.
Questions this raises
What if my wedding is closer than two months away?
Tell us the date honestly and we will tell you honestly what is possible. Some things can be compressed and some cannot — hand embroidery is hours, and hours cannot be hurried without it showing. What we will not do is accept an order we cannot make properly in the time.
What actually decides how long a lehenga takes?
The embroidery, almost entirely. A piece carrying two hundred hours and one carrying six hundred are the same cutting job and a very different making job. Four weeks at most is the calendar for a normal bridal commission, drawing and cloth included — six is the outside of it, not the average.
Does the studio take fewer orders in wedding season?
It takes a limited number at any time of year, because the work is not sent out. What changes from November to February is how quickly those places fill — which is why a season date wants deciding earlier than feels necessary.