Usually, I don't feel comfortable wearing a sari, so I don't. It makes me feel self-counscious and I am always afraid some disaster will happen while I'm wearing it. I did after all manage to tear a salwar kamiz on the way to the family temple, angering my MIL and having lots of strangers laugh a my face... until someone finally told me there was a slight problem... so imagine what could happen with a sari !
But last time we went to India, I took my plain cotton handloom sari with me, and I was overjoyed to find a matching stretchy blouse to go with it. Nodoby can tear a stretchy blouse, right ? I wanted to dress up for the family. As it happened we were there for an important family wedding and nobody took special interest in me (apart from telling me off for things my husband did or didn't do, and asking me to bless the bride and groom once the marriage hall was almost empty).... For the wedding I wore two salwar outfits I'd bought in France.
Then we went on a trip and I used the sari as a blanket for the baby in the car. Suddenly hubby decides to stop in Trichy. Usually foreigners are not allowed to see the god in that temple, but someone told hubby if I wore a saree and jasmin flowers and looked hindu, then they may let me in. So I had to struggle alone in the bathroom to wrap myself in a blanket-sari while hubby and his nephew were doing something... What an ordeal. But it gave me the right to queue 3 hours to have a glimpse of the god and give him lotus flowers and tulsi (and then have the tulsi shoved back in my face by a grudging priest)...
Anyways. Hubby took pictures of me outside the temple. My MIL said I had a village sari but she liked my stretchy blouse. My Tamil girlfriends later told me I wrapped the sari in grandmother style. No wonder they let me in as a local in the temple lol... and our last day in India, my MIL gave me a gorgeous purple sari.
Then recently someone told me in India if a woman doesn't look her best, people think she is unhappy in marriage. Oh dear.
