When our relationships are new, we celebrate every little milestone – The 1st Monthaversary, The 2nd Monthaversary, The Half-Yearly Anniversary, The Day He Said ‘I Love You’ Anniversary, The Day She Said it Back Anniversary…every cute little thing. You even collect things that mark special occasions – the first hand-made card, the ticket stubs from the first movie you saw together, a matchbox from the fancy restaurant where you had a meal together, the first rose he ever gave you. And it’s pretty much the same when you get married.
You make an extra effort to plan the perfect moment to celebrate special occasions. You think about the details. You put yourself into creating a memory that will last forever.
And then, as the months turn into years, there’s a change. Celebrations are now just reserved for the big milestones.
Strangely enough, the love might have grown over the years, but the effort in planning a special moment or party, is much less. Shouldn’t it be more, though?
What does one do? How can one stir things up?
There is a way. In one word –
‘SURPRISE!!’
Yes! Don’t you just love that word? Surprise!
Now add a number of smiling, joyful, excited faces of the people you love – spouse, fiancé, lover, besties, parents, siblings – surrounding you, looking at you after having shouted – SURPRISE!
Or, maybe just that one person – the one you would walk barefoot up a mountain for, go diving for pearls for, wrestle pigs in the mud for – that person looking at you with the eyes of love, the joy in them sparkling like diamonds after having whispered deliciously into your ear – surprise!
Now some of us might have done it before, planned the perfect surprise party starting from the guest list to the snacks to the music, but what about the next time round? How does one keep things fresh? What other ways are there to surprise the ones we love if we’ve already done it once before? And what about those of us who have no clue where to start?
This is where ‘Dotted i’ comes in – the one-stop, creative, event-planning and gifting organisation! Started by Naadia Mirza, who was left cold by the lack of imagination that went into parties and social events, Dotted i does party planning of all kinds – surprise parties, themed birthday parties, office parties, bachelorette parties – you name it, you’ve got it! Not just that, they also specialise in custom gifts and cakes, befitting the occasion.
Naadia and her team of party planners have thrown some bumper parties over the years and her satisfied customers have become her regulars – if they want a zaraa sa hatke party, they know that Naadia’s their girl.
She’s your perfect partner-in-crime to plan a party or an event or even a cosy, romantic surprise that will knock your partner’s socks off!
One smitten young man wanted to surprise his fiancée everyday for 60 days until their wedding. He prepared an entire dossier filled with her likes, dislikes, habits and quirks, and gave it to Naadia. Armed with this mountain of information, Naadia came up with some impressive surprises for the elated girl who didn’t know what to expect when. Starting from surprise rides in a BMW as well as an auto, to gifts with love quotes attached to a huge billboard plastered with a proposal in a prominent spot in Bangalore, the groom-to-be pulled out all the stops and, Naadia and company were his able and willing partners-in-crime.
Naadia’s personalised treasure hunts for couples are all the rage – whether they’re the kind that are planned as an adventure across the city or just in the bedroom for couples looking to add some garam masala to their day…or night!
This is what Naadia loves to do – come up with creative and zany ideas that rock anybody’s boat. Being in cahoots with the person throwing the party, planning the actual details to make the shindig into an unforgettable memory and finally, that moment of truth, the look on the face of the person for whom all this was planned – the Kodak moment, the awww moment, the SURPRISE moment…truly speaking, what’s not to love about this?
And best of all is the feedback she gets from couples! No one likes monotony and couples who explore new ways of celebrating their love and each other, will keep the flame of their passion alive.
Baisali Chatterjee Dutt, a former columnist and agony aunt for Mother & Baby magazine and contributor to Parent & Baby, has compiled and edited two volumes for the Chicken Soup for the Indian Soul series, and written Sharbari Datta: The Design Diva, a biography of one of Calcutta’s leading fashion luminaries. Her poetry has been published in various anthologies and magazines, print as well as online. Her other passion is theatre. She has performed with some of the country’s top English theatre groups. Currently she is a drama facilitator at The Creative Arts Studio and South Point School. Born in New York, schooled in Bangalore, with college in Delhi, she now lives in Kolkata with her family.