Vanakkam People…….Hope you liked my previous post. I love the idea, and cannot wait to see the concept be rolled out in the rest of the world, and see how people are going to use it. Anyway, my blogpost for this week is about something completely different….. Have any of you, like me, wondered why a Hindu wedding needs to be on specific auspicious date…. And why it’s not allowed to get married in July? I have often thought about it, because July is for me an amazing month, weather is nice, everyone can easily get holiday from work and school, so travels are easy, but from July 15^th to August 15^th is a totally forbidden month to get married. I have done my research online and found the following answers.

July 15^th to August 15^th is called the month “Aadi”. It’s the 4^th month in the Tamil calendar. In some regions newly married couple are kept separated in this period as well. The reason for this is (as far as I have read online), in early days it was considered that if a woman gets pregnant in Aadi month, she will deliver the baby in March or April, which are the hottest months. The karthikai Veyil will take place in this period. Pregnant woman will suffer more in the hot weather and the newborn will also suffer in the climate. The pregnant will also face cold during the critical month of her pregnancy (December + January).

In this period also a lot of religious festivals takes place, Aadi Chevvai, Aadi Velli, Aadi Karthigai, Aadi Amavasai, Aadi 18 Perukku, Andal Pooram and Varalakshmi Puja. So when all this festivals takes place, the pregnant woman will not be able to join these festivals as well, which is another reason why the husband and wife are separated. {adselite}

Its not only a wedding that cannot take place in Aadi, but it’s also not considered good to shift to a new house or even buy new clothes. I don’t know how many are actually aware of that, at least I haven’t heard it before Hmmmmm…… we live in a scientific world where we know better than what they knew back then. Even though we live all around the world, and have none of the issues mentioned above, we will keep the tradition. That is one of the things I like about the Hindu and Tamil people. We stick to our traditions, and we keep following them, even though we know it might be nonsense.

Imagine me if I could do not shopping in July, what about all the sales that happens in July. What about Aadi thallupadu in India and Sri Lanka …. That would be hard, so in fact I don’t follow the traditions when it comes to little ego me. Traditions are really good. It’s good to have some “rules and regulations” that we stick to. That is what makes our weddings so beautiful, and entertained, because of traditions. When that is said, I think it’s important that we also sometimes question the traditions, and try to understand the meaning behind our traditions. Back then, here was some clever people who actually had a point by creating these traditions.

Guys let me know what your thoughts are on this topic. Could be interesting to know what your views are – Should we stick to our tradition that was created hundreds of years ago or should we be more scientific and be more realistic?  

Until next time

Hi guys. I hope my first 2 blog posts were interesting for you to read.

The plan is that we will upload minimum 1 blogpost per week, but could be more than that, so stop by now and then, to be updated. 

I am currently sitting on the backseat of a 9 seater and driving through the amazing Switzerland. Guys I have been living in Europe for the last 30 years, and I spent more than 150 days outside the country. I been to Switzerland now and then, but damn ...... No words can describe how amazingly beautiful this country is.... If you haven't tried driving through the mountains in CH, that is definitely something you should write down on your list, for #PlacesINeedToVisit. We started out in Germany, and was driving through to get into Belgium. From there to Luxembourg, France, Switzerland, Austria, Italy and Lichtenstein. I am traveling with my brother and my cousins. We had a tight but structured plan, and have been able to see so much in a very short time. Amazing week, so many nice locations around this area, definitely something I can recommend :) during this trip, snapchat has been frequently used by all of us, which is related to the subject I wanna talk about in this blogpost.

There are several ways to personalize your event on different social media channels. The most common one I have seen being used is hashtag. The hosts will request everyone who uploads pictures on Facebook, Instagram to hashtag their picture e.g. #XXwedsYY. By doing this it's easier for the hosts to see what has been uploaded. It's a really funny and easy way to collect memories.

Working with marketing, gives me the knowledge on trends and ideas that can be used. One of the recent ideas I have seen, and find very cool and interesting is snapchat.

Snapchat is all over, everyone uses snapchat to share what they are doing with their friends and family. Others use it as a marketing tool, for vlogging etc. I have recently discovered that snapchat allows you to buy a personal filter for your event. It will be temporary and restricted by a geofilter. It is very easy to create and a really exciting idea :) {adselite}

• users can choose areas that are minimum of 20.000 square feet and maximum 5.000.000 square feet. Roughly that would be a few city blocks. The custom filters can be used from 1 hour to thirty days.
• the filters starts at $5, which is the approximate Price for a 8 hour event. This money will place the filter on snapchat. The price will change according to the time and amount of space the filter covers.
• users needs to design their filter and submit it through Snapchats online portal. Once the image is uploaded, the user can define the area that the filter has to cover. And then finally choose the time and date that they want the filter to be available.

When all these informations have been submitted, Snapchat has announced they will come back within 1 business day. Currently the custom filters are only available in UK, USA and Canada, but will be available in the rest of the world very soon.

I personally think this is amazing, it's cheap, fun and different from what everyone else does. When I as a host am done with the event, I will receive all snaps that has been uploaded with my filter. Definitely an idea I see people will use in the future.

If you guys have any question regarding this service, comment below, and I will answer you.

Until next time

Planning an event, a party, a function is not easy. When we decide we want to do an event, we have a goal. We have an idea of how the event has to turn out. We make a function to celebrate. To celebrate something we are proud of, happy about, and basically we want to share this happiness with the people around us. This can be a wedding, a puberty ceremony, a birthday, a good party…. Whatever….. You name it.

In order to have a successful event, both for the guests and the host yourself, planning is super important. If you start early with your planning, it will be less stressful and easy for yourself, so as soon as you have decided to have a function, get started on the planning. With my project management skills, I can write pages about good planning, about overview, about tools etc. etc. etc. It will take me forever to write everything, because there is so many tools that can be used. Some tools work for some people, some others for others. I will touch upon the different once that I find helpful, in the blogs in the future. This post is just very basic and very general about planning an event.

It is important to have a high level overview over the event in your mind, in order to be able to create a success. Some of the headlines that I find important are the followings:

1. Develop event goal and objectives. Why are we doing this? How do we want this to be received from the guest? What is our goal with this event?
2. Organize a team. Depending on the size of the event (we Tamils never have small events !!:) ) organize other people to be responsible. You are still the “project manager” but give out the different tasks to others, in that way you will be able to still have the overview, take the most important decisions, but you will have other people to help you fulfil the task before the event, but also at the event itself. What I personally like about giving responsibility to other people, is to get other people’s opinion on the different things. Others might have a different view on the subject that you, yourself might not have thought about. So organize a team!!
3. Set a date. When you know when the event is gonna take place, please tell people. We Tamils have so many functions, all the time. Every weekend we get ready, take on a 6 meter long saree on, spent hours fixing make up, hair, jewelries, matching bangles….. You name it. We have events all the time. In order to help your guests, to be prepared for the event, go out and tell them as soon as u know when the event is gonna take place. Make them reserve the date.{adselite}
4. Brand your event. Make an invitation. This can be done in several ways. I will write another blogpost about this later. But make an official invitation and share with your guests, so they feel welcomed, invited and can start to look even more forward to your event.
5. Create a masterplan. Again, a big topic I can write pages about. But creating a masterplan with your team, is important. Brainstorm on this as early as possible, both for you to get an overview of how this is actually going to look like when its gonna happen, but also for your team to get started, and start to get going.
6. Have deadlines. Create milestone deadlines. Deadlines for you, and for your team. Don’t forget buffers, is something unwanted turns up. Without deadlines it will never be easy to create an event.
7. Establish a budget Budget is super important. I have not known anyone in my surroundings that have kept their initial budget. I have a very good tool for budgeting, that I will share another time, but create an overall budget, in order to avoid unwanted surprises.

Guys, again I can write pages about planning, and I will in small bits and pieces and introduce some relevant tools for you as well. But for now, my message is just, if you have a goal with your party or event, you need to plan it well. Start as early as possible. This is both to create a great event for you and for your guest.

Until next time

The blogging trend is all over. We live in a time where everyone is online ALL THE TIME. As soon as we wake up, we check our phones, and get updated on what has been going on since we checked our phone last (which was most probably the last thing we did before we slept). It is necessary for us to be online all the time, we need to follow each other, we need to know what our surrounding are doing, and we always need to keep ourselves updated.

Not only do we need to keep updated about what is going around among the once we knows, but we also need to follow famous people, on twitter, through their Instagram and through their own social media channels. We also follow people that are not necessarily famous, but are just interesting to follow. Again here I am referring to their Instagram, snapchat, Facebook, twitter and blogs. Blogs, what is it actually?!? I remembered when I was around 17 years old, so that was 13 years ago, one of my older “sisters” was blogging. That was when I first met the word blog. It was basically an open diary. Pretty interesting to follow because I knew her. It was good to keep updated about what she did …… Or was I just curious?? Facebook didn’t exist back then, so a good way to know what she was doing. Maybe some kind of a role model….. I don’t know….. Hm…. Anyway I don’t really know how many of her posts I was reading, yea apparently it wasn’t that interesting. {adselite}

Blogging in 2016 is a whole different thing. Now the posts have to be something that I need to know and can use. Something I can relate to, use in any way, or at least it needs to benefit my everyday life, otherwise it will simply be just boring for me to read. I don’t care what xx’s ate for dinner and how that turned out. No I want the recipe, so I can copy her, and see if I feel the same way as xx did. I want something out of the blog, otherwise It couldn’t bother me less.

Hm, so why am I doing this? Why am I writing a blog? What do I have to tell the world that can benefit anyone’s life here? When I was asked to do a blog on kondattam.de I was like….. hm…. But why??... and with what purpose?!? A little confused and curious I said YES. I might have something interesting to tell. I wanna give inspiration to people who visits the site, to get tips, tricks and ideas for when they are going to plan their function. I wanna hook up with people in the business, and chat with them, I wanna share whatever they feel like sharing through this blog. I wanna do research about trends, what’s new, what cool to do, and give you all good inspiration for your next function.

Not all post will be relevant for everyone. But stop by now and then, and check out what I have to say :)
This is it, this will be one of my new hobbies, and I hope you are gonna enjoy it, as much as I am gonna enjoy writing it. Please comment below, subscribe to our newsletter, and come back soon for the next blogpost, which will be about planning – Planning is everything in order to create an amazing event for you, the host, and for the guests aswell.

Until next time <3