Confusion regarding my baby shower

Dear babyboom,

Just dropped in to say a hi. Howz you and your 'LO' doing?

 

baby boom

Congratulations. Looks like you and I will be delivering at almost the same time I complete 28 weeks tomorrow!

That is exactly what I did with my seemandham and valaikaapu this past week. I just called a few close friends for the seemandham which included the parents of a friend so that there was some older person to give us instructions on what to do. So we first had the valaikaapu function while the priest was getting things ready for the pooja and homam and the aunty arranged the bangles and made me wear them. After that we had the seemandham pooja and the homam for which all the friends stayed. I don't know how they will do it at your temple, but here, I wore madisar for the first pooja (called udhaga shanthi) and then after a little water bath, the priest asked me to change into another saree. So I would suggest you to take an extra saree with you. We also had the function at the temple and avoided having it at home for precisely the reason that we'd have to end up calling too many people early in the morning and arrange for food etc.

For the baby shower that included all the rest, my friends gave me a surprise shower, so that kinda covered everyone. So having a religious function and a separate baby shower worked really well for us.

 

Hi friends

Can someone please guide me as to how to go about doing a traditional seemandham in US..how long will the function last and how much will it cost..Can we do the puja at home or is it better to do it at the temple..even i will be inviting very few friends since the seemandham muhurtham will be done early morning..then did u have the baby shower function whre in u invite all your friends or everything gets over at the temple..Hope someone can throw some light on this..

 

cool09... it depends on what scale you want to do the traditional function. As babyboom mentioned, the best person to contact is the hindu temple (If there's any in your area) and check the temple's website. They usually have all the details of the different services (read Poojas/Homams etc). and also how much it would cost. At least in the temple here, there are separate charges for performing it at the temple and at home that needs to be paid to the temple and then the priest's dakshina is separate. So contact the temple or the priest, that would be the first step. All the best!

 

Baby Boom,

I had both the traditional and the american way of baby shower. But the traditional one was at home..I called only 3 ladies for the traditional function and I made sure that they came home for that...For the american way I called rest of the friends (about 30 people) and I got the cake, played baby shower games and dinner...

Both of them were fun..

Enjoy!