Architect and Mrs Dantata

28: AMAL

Zayd and I's wedding is fixed for December 24th. That's the day our families agreed for the Daurin Aure. Every other event would revolve before and after that date.

Zayd and I actually wanted the wedding in late October or early November but our families are convinced that there's still a lot to do and plan so we both – Zayd and I – suck it up and decide to go with it. On the bright side, it'll be during the break so it'll be easier for a lot of people to attend; many of which are my friends who haven't allowed me rest since I told them I had gotten officially engaged.

News about my engagement to Zayd somehow gets out and a lot of wedding and gossip accounts take it upon themselves to share the news. My follower counts across all social media platforms increase and so does Zayd's. We're constantly tagged to one post or the other and it takes a lot to ignore them. There are many people who try to come up with what they perceive to be our love story and the stories they end up sharing are really cringey. They can honestly do better.

A marriage between families as big as both of ours means there are so many people who believe they know what's good for you. To them, every opinion must count and at the end of the day, it'll be a wedding that is more of what they want and not what Zayd and I want. Zayd and I are not having it and our stubbornness makes quite a number of them mad but it's our wedding and they have to live with it.

Despite them wanting to rush into everything, Zayd and I chose to go slow. We start with creating a timeline and fitting in all that we need to do into specific timeframes so everything is equally dealt with. The first on the list is furnishing our house and we focus solely on that while our aunts and uncles argue that we're wasting time. Our parents and siblings stand behind us, offering their full support which makes Zayd and me extremely grateful.

Jonathan heads the interior project and he gets assisted by his cousin, Jane, who is a lovely woman with a really good eye. We have similar taste which makes everything better. Zayd tells me Jane is going to be one of the employees in the company formerly called Samar's once everything is in order. Honestly, my fiancé has a lot on his plate and it's amazing how well he handles everything and still makes time to ensure we walk every step together. You can't stop loving a man like that.

Simple, yet elegant is the theme we go for and Jonathan says it's better to call it a contemporary interior. To make him nag, Zayd and I pretend to not pay him any attention and we get our desired result while Jane laughs. For the lobby (which is really big), we get a shoe rack made from dark wood that takes up the lower half of an entire wall. We plan to fill half of it with home slippers for the guests we end up having. I'm not allowing people wear their shoes into my house. Placed above the shoe rack is a long mirror that's put up horizontally. The day it's put up, I bless it with a lot of mirror pictures, Jonathan, Zayd and Jane right behind me; all sporting smiles that are as wide as mine.

We get three padded armchairs pushed against the opposite wall, all placed side by side. They're velvet chairs because I don't want us to deal with cracked leather in the future and they're meant for those who want to sit there instead of coming in. We all have those visitors that we don't want to take into the house so this would work for them. To add a little more beauty, we get a painting to hang on the wall the chairs are pushed against and we add a minimalistic chandelier which Jonathan loves more than he should. We – Zayd, Jane and I – have a hunch that he actually likes the woman we got it from. Her name is Busola and she's on her way to establishing her own company. She wants to name it Bloom and I'm here for it.

The windows of the living and dining rooms get covered with the fawn black-out curtains we purchased. Before we got those curtains, I wanted us to get those curtains that come with inner ones. Seeing how these curtains fit the spaces perfectly, I'm glad we didn't get the ones I originally wanted. Getting a sofa set we all loved was a hassle and just when we about to give up, we stumbled upon a four piece sofa set that, according to the furniture house's employee, came from Roberto Grassie.