Share your seemantham experience please!

Hello ladies,
I am expecting. My mil is here for the next few months and would like to do valakappu and seemantham for me. We know how exactly these ceremonies are done in India. But I dont think it will be possible to replicate the ceremonies in the exact way here. Also, I want to keep things simple because I feel very tired and achy by evening every day and dont have any energy and my mil is also not in the best health. I want to understand how such traditional ceremonies can be done here in the US

If you had your seemantham and valakappu done here in the bay area or anywhere else in the US, i would be grateful if you could share your experience. Like, which month did you do it in, what time of the day were the ceremonies performed, how did you arrange for food, did you do it at your residence or somewhere else etc. I know i am asking for a lot of info, but hopefully this thread will be helpful for indian women living in the US and who are anxious about these ceremonies. Thank you so much!

hi, I live in Sunnyvale and did my seemandam in my 6th month in October and it was really cold. As we live in an apartment and the guest list was above 30, we did the Seemantham in a hall in Milpitas and catered the food. However this tired me out as the preparations were too many. Most of my friends do the following 2 ways
a) Livermore temple - You have to pay the temple for the space and the Priest. Comes out to about $200, get the food from home and it can be buffet eating at the temple grounds
b) Conduct it at home :You will need to pay the priest for coming and Transit charges too.A few of my friends catered from Komala Vilas and Bheema's for $10- $15 a plate. Worked out simpler
The ceremony is pretty consistent with Indian ceremony, as you can get most items in the local Indian stores.

hope this helps

Hi Sunny,

I attended my friends sreemantham
It was done in her 9th month. I think srimanthams are performed in odd months.
It was performed in her friends house.
Food - Rice items and vegetable curry - they prepared at home
Non-Veg curries, chapati and samosa - Ordered

She was seated in the chair, all ladies applied gandam to her cheeks, and kumkum on her forehead, and made her wear bangles.

Aarthi songs will be there for sreemantham, may be you can record them and ask them to take harthi.

Good Luck!

Pavithra and Archana, thnak you so much for your feedback. Catering sounds like a good idea. We have a guest list of only 20 people or so. The only thing i am worried about is doing homam (sacred fire) on the carpet, as i am staying in a rented apartment. Plus, the apartment has a sprinkler system and i dont think we can disable it. So, we may have to find a hall or something and do it there.

Hi Sunny 79

COngratulations .We have done all sorts of homam (seemantham,devasam ,grahpravseam,punykavachanam and ayoshomam) in one bedroom apartment with sprinkler

Here they use something called havansamagiri for homam.All u need is 2 aluminum trays .

U need to open the windows or if it cold remove the smoke the smoke alarm and keep it on the bedroom

If u call Balusastri he gives u good information and does it very well .

Thanks Scorpiogal. It would be very convenient if we did it at home because we dont have too many guests. Have you got food catered from komala vilas? What was your experience?