If Black Friday or your trip of a lifetime has depleted your bank account so you have to watch what you buy, then you might consider renting your outfit. Especially, if it is a very elegant piece of couture. Like its neighbour Gangehi, Nika’s main shop also offers a range of clothing complete with custom tailoring. But it also offers a range of saris for wedding hire. So you can have the most ravishing piece without the expensive or having to cram it into your suitcase.
As wedding season starts to hit full swing, expectant brides to be might want to spend the money that they save on their dress on a more spectacular setting for their nuptials. If paradise alone isn’t a striking enough setting, then most resorts offer a white linen tabernacle set up on the beach or over the water on a groygne. But Ayada features a stunning wedding tabernacle for ceremonies. Draped in white linen…set in a copse of swaying palms, the ‘The White Room’ provides an elegant wedding chapel.
Mind you, wedding pavilions can get trashed too as the epic wedding comedy ‘Meet the Fokers’ portrayed hysterically…
If you prefer to apply your camera creativity to staging something on that elusive boundary between above and below water, then you might want to turn to Tania Sorokina for some help. Tania is the resident photographer at Iru Fushi who has just introduced ‘Trash the Dress’ shoots…
“’Trash the Dress’ or ‘Rock the Frock’ is a photography phenomenon Taking the World by Storm and it is now in the Maldives at Hilton Maldives Iru Fushi Resort & Spa…Guests can create a masterpiece that will hang proudly on their wall at home, a picture that will bring back fond and fun memories of their stay at Hilton Maldives Iru Fushi Resort & Spa. Perhaps they are celebrating a wedding anniversary or you just want to have fun in their wedding dress or maybe they are on their honeymoon and don’t want their special day to end. They can run along pristine white sandy beaches with their own set of props, create images that would suit a surreal pre-Raphaelite approach to painting, have a water fights, catch fish, jump (or be pushed) into swimming pools – Tania, the in-house photographer can create a fantastic library of amusing or serene images…If guests don’t have a wedding dress, but still fancy some fun an evening dress or a ball. gown would be equally as fun. Packages start from $450 and include 60 images.”
I always wondered about those wedding photo shoots and how they must have to worry about the dress getting ruined in the sand or ocean. Well, now they don’t have to fret. In fact, they can relish it. The meme is a great justification for splashing in the dress photo rather than splashing out on the dress.
The latest celebrity Maldives visit (also in a ‘family way’) is Marvin and Rochelle Humes. No surprise that they too are staying at Reethi Rah. Daily Mail coverage included a pic of their bath decoration. Petals in the bath water are de rigeur for romantic spa experiences, but Reethi has gone a step further applying this time honoured bed decoration to the other most relaxing (and at time romantic) part of a villa.
It’s that time of year again when the coral polyps become all twitter-pated with this week’s full moon (corals reproduce during the full moon in the summer). Coincidentally, Venus – the Roman goddess of Love – passed in front of the fiery Sun today to stoke even more astronomically romance into the mix.
If you want to celebrate this season of micro-organism orgasmics, then Kuramathi offers a ‘Coral Romance’ excursion…
“For ultimate relaxation, tranquillity and some pampering, take a trip to the heavenly island of Kandholhudhu, reached 45 minutes by speedboat. Surrounded by a stunning beach, this small and lush island boasts one of the most beautiful house reefs in the Maldives.”
Romance from the heavens above to the ocean depths below.
Now that I have your attention! (you know, sometimes titles just write themselves…though ‘Polypamory’ was a really close runner-up).
The Maldives is renowned for newly betrothed couples consummating their nuptials with a honeymoon celebration. But the very microscopic creatures who built the Maldives over millennia, coral polyps, will be celebrating a honeymoon of their own this week in rather distinctive style. Their rather exotic ‘bedroom’ habits certainly put the ‘moon’ in the ‘honeymoon’. That is according to this month’s Scientific American featuring a piece about Coral Polyp reproduction…
“It is hard to court the opposite sex when you are cemented in place, which explains why polyps—the tiny creatures whose exoskeletons form corals—do not reproduce by mating. Instead they cast millions of sperm and eggs into the sea, where they drift up to the ocean surface, collide, form larvae and float away to form new coral reefs. Polyps may not be picky about their “mates,” but they are sticklers for timing. The polyps in a coral reef will “blow” their eggs and sperm simultaneously in quick frenzies for just one, or maybe a few, consecutive nights a year—and they usually do so shortly after sunset on evenings closely following a full moon…A reef generally picks one day during a full moon in summer to blow, for 20 minutes or so, during the twilight hours.”
I guess if we were going to grant a ‘Best of’ accolade for ‘Reef Romance’ it would have to go to none other than the to Sheraton’s eponymous ‘Full Moon’ resort.
As it happens, this June’s Full Moon offers a special treat as well of an ‘extra long Lunar Eclipse. MSNBC reports “This month’s full moon will pass almost directly through the center of Earth’s shadow on Wednesday in what will be an unusually long total eclipse of the moon, 100 minutes. The next total lunar eclipse of exceptional length will be July 27, 2018, and will last 106 minutes.”
The Full Moon this week rises at 8:14 pm on Wednesday 15th June. It promises to be quite the eventful evening from sea to sky.
The Royal couple of WIlliam and Katherine are now married and the honeymoon beckons. No word yet on the destination, but the Maldives are one of the world’s top honeymoon destinations. With everywhere being such romantically tropical paradise, how does one choose the most quintessentially romantic spot. There are lots of criteria to consider, but if the ultimate chill-out after the manic wedding build-up is called for, then I know of no more romantic spa treatment than Kuramathi’s couple’s massage.
The couples massage experience is a fairly standard offering across the Maldives. Throw two tables in a room instead of just one and, voila, a treat you share ‘together’ rather than queing up after each other or retiring to separate quarters.
But Kuramathi have gone that creative step further. After your resplendent couple’s massage, the two of you are taken to another treatment room where a gigantic bathtub is filled with a bubbles, sprinkled with flower petals and accompanied by not only glasses of sparkling wine, but also a chocolate fountain with tropical fruits. The couple are then given the key to the room so they can lock the door from the inside and they can enjoy a further hour at the spa in sumptuous privacy.
Friends of ours recently returned from their honeymoon, which we had helped them to research, and told us all about their magical afternoon at the spa. Genius.
Ooohhh…sore feet. Whether it yesterday’s marathon or tenderness from overly hot sand, Four Seasons Landaa Giraavaru has the pedi-treatment for you.
Their Blu restaurant is a lovely place with a rustic, understated elegance fashioned from unpolished concrete and distressed wood. To extend the soothing comfort of its Italian delicacies, it also offers diner in the pool. Many resorts have ‘pool-side’ bars, but Landaa is the first ‘pool-in’ dining. I thought that the sensation of warm sand between my toes during dinner was distinctive, but warm water soaking my feet while a crisp Sauvignon soaks my palette is sublime.
Landaa’s piscinary gourmet uniqueness may be somewhat short-lived, however, as the upcoming Ayada resort has a published designs which show even more extensive catering to this no-shoes style of dining.
A final note to add an inspiring follow up to my post-script of the last post. Mark Deakin not only completed the London Marathon, but started a new life marathon at the same time as he stopped at the Tower Bridge to propose to his girlfriend, Ilona. So Landaa’s pool dining can not only soothe Mark’s weary feet, but also provide the perfectly romantic celebration to their new life together. Maybe this post should be ‘Best Post-Marathon Marriage Proposal Romantic Dinner’.
Maldives is arguably the most romantic place on earth. Today is the most romantic day of the year. So where precisely do you want to be?
Well, I would propose Four Seasons’ Landaa Giraavaru’s Spa and Ayurvedic Retreat. They offer a striking array of treatments impressive even on Maldives standards (a few years ago Maldives was awarded ‘Spa Capital of Asia’). But one stands out on this day of lovers – ‘Tantric Traditions’.
Now anyone who’s read Hello magazine on the flight over will be familiar with Sting’s infamous advocacy of tantric practices in a loving relationship. While in the West, ‘Tantric’ is most commonly associated with romantic intimacy, it is actually part of a larger tradition and practice “channel [divine] energy, within the human microcosm, in creative and emancipatory ways”
Landaa’s session involves two therapists, male and female, working together with a couple…
“Our Tantriks in LG, seek to work with the life force energy or prana by means of yoga asanas, pranayama, meditation techniques, mantra chanting, invigorating massages etc in their rituals resulting in channelizing the prana along the nadis and activating the chakra points, the ultimate aim being to stimulate the kundalini. However this is only an attempt in that direction. The positive outcome of the treatment in a modern sense is the attainment of optimal autonomic balance leading to peace and relaxation.”
Landaa emphasizes that everything in the session is completely conventional and respectable. But what each couple choose to take back to the privacy of their own villa for further practice is up to them…
While Diva might be the overall romantic resort of choice, for that special night time seduction, Nika goes the extra mile. Well, the extra minutes. If the mere 37 rooms was not private enough, then…
“Exactly at midnight on the whole island turns off the light, and in total darkness for three minutes, a pair of lovers can once again make a frank recognition of each other or just watch the starry sky.”