Marriage isn’t perfect and Chaya and Kirtan know that now after experiencing both a power outage and a fire at their South Indian wedding on July 2, 2017 at the Omni Houston Hotel Westside, Houston. But love conquers all, and they went on to have a beautiful reception inspired by the colors of her favorite fruit, a peach.
She Says: Our wedding day had a few pretty notable snafus. First, in the gap between our ceremony and our reception, the power in our hotel went out. I mean, in the entire hotel, for 20 minutes, for no clear reason. This meant I couldn’t wash my hair and get it done the way I originally intended for the reception. More importantly, it resulted in my poor mother-in-law getting stuck in an elevator for 20 minutes. Eventually, the power came back on and we went about our business, though we had to make some adjustments. Second, during the reception, the stage briefly caught fire while our friends were performing a dance. Luckily, a lot of uncles noticed and put the fire out before anything serious could happen. I tell all these stories to say that nothing will ever be perfect, not even (or perhaps especially) on your wedding day. But with the right partner, things like that don’t matter.
Kirtan and I met on a blind date.
We both wanted to meet new people and a mutual friend thought we’d get along because of our love of music and writing/reading. We had dinner together in a little casual Italian eatery and just kept spending time together—the rest is history!
Kirtan proposed on a trip to Vermont.
We had been there before and loved it, so he took me there again for our proposal. His first choice of location was a beautiful, easy mountain hike, but the mountain was closed for a vintage car race. His second choice of location was a peaceful, rural cheese farm, but it started pouring rain when we got there. So we found a picturesque covered bridge, where we walked down to the river shore and sat on boulders and watched the mist drift by. We built a little rock cairn before going back to the car, with him handing me the rocks for the tower. When I turned around after placing the last rock on the cairn, he was down on one knee.
We had a very traditional South Indian ceremony, because that’s what I wanted. We didn’t really pick a specific theme. It was important to me that the different parts of the ceremony be understood by our guests, especially those who didn’t have an Indian or Hindu background. To help demystify the whole thing, we had a detailed explanation of the wedding ceremony on our wedding website as well as a slideshow that we played during the ceremony. One of my best friends narrated along with the slideshow so people would know where we were in the ceremony.
For décor, I was inspired by a luscious garden styled photoshoot I saw as well as an image from an outdoor wedding with a beautiful ivy-covered backdrop with a couple of flowers. I love the colors on a peach (orange, pink, red), and asked our decorators to use flowers in those colors. I wanted a rich, green, enchanted garden feel and our decorators really delivered! Kirtan and I both love writing so one other unique thing we did was have little business card-sized favors printed up for each guest at the ceremony. On the front was a photo from our engagement shoot and on the back was an excerpt (below) from an E.E. Cummings poem. We both carry one of those cards around in our wallet.
the best gesture of my brain is
less than
your eyelids’ flutter which says
we are for each other; then
laugh, leaning back in my arms
for life’s not a paragraph
and death I think is no parenthesis.
Photography: SB Image Studios
Wedding Planner: Amy Patel of The Storybook Event
Decorator: Sheila Burki Designs
Florist: Vivek Flowers
Videographer: Blink Films
Caterers: Udipi Cafe and Bombay Brasserie
Cakes /Sweets: For Heaven’s Cake
Hair and Makeup, Henna: Bhavna Desai
DJ: DJ Tamim
Transportation: Jordan Limousines
