After meeting On Coffee Meets Bagel these two travel junkies couldn’t stop talking. Enjoying the planning process throughout 2019, they originally set to get married on March 28, 2020. They planned on having a large 450 person wedding at a beautiful Huntington Beach hotel. In typical 2020 style, approximately two weeks before the wedding, the COVID lockdown hit and sadly, they were forced to postpone. Not knowing which way to turn, the next few months were confusing, exhausting and emotionally draining for the couple, trying to figure out their next steps. A new date was set to December 6, 2020 and planning was once again underway to have the original bollywood affair planned for March. The majority of vendors showed grace and flexibility and to the couple’s delight were able to stay on board. Again dreams of wedding bells went sideways and the wedding was drastically downsized to just immediate family in our parent's backyard.
“In the month leading up to the wedding. I truly witnessed the good in people. Our décor team went above and beyond to make sure we didn't feel like we missed out on our wedding day, getting on phone calls with us daily to make sure our vision came to life. My make up artist was an absolute gem, completely understanding when I had to downgrade my services to just me and a couple of bridesmaids and then making me feel like the most beautiful princess on our wedding day. Our photography team helped us set up a live stream for all our guests who couldn't be there physically and worked with us to capture some truly amazing photos of the day. We knew this year was tough on all the vendors in the wedding industry, but we were so thankful for how compassionate our team was!”
A modern couple, they decided they didn't want to wear the traditional red, knowing it wasn't authentic to their personal style. As a Maharashtrian bride, traditionally, the bride would be wearing yellow and they wanted to incorporate some conventional details with their more modern coastal bohemian wedding. With gold being a homage to the Maharashtrian yellow they moved forward with white, gold, and touches of blue and green to tie together the decor.
In 2019, the bride and her mom took a mother-daughter trip to San Jose to do some bridal shopping. After stumbling upon Swati Couture, the bride’s vision of a modern lengha with tons of sparkle was brought to life. Virtually, the bride was able to custom design her perfect bridal gown and matching jewelry.
Without a sliver of doubt, the most memorable moment of the wedding was the surprise after party the couple’s siblings were able to pull off. Due to COVID the wedding guest list was drastically reduced, and caused much heartache for the couple. However, the wedding celebration was over, masked up, socially distanced, the couple was greeted with a surprise backyard get together with a handful of friends that weren't able to come to the ceremony. With charming detail like a cookie table, a pizza vendor, and lawn games, it was a sweet ending to this extra special day.
How did you meet your Groom and when did you know he was "the one"?
I met Sahaj On Coffee Meets Bagel. To be honest I was skeptical about trying dating apps but my senior year of college at Carnegie Mellon’s and after not really dating much in college I started to consider the possibility. I had just gotten a job offer to move to Los Angeles and knew I wasn’t going to know anybody. My brother, recently had moved to Houston and told me he had joined CMB (also a skeptic) and has met this AMAZING girl ( who is now his wife) and said that I should give it a try. So I graduated and moved to LA and created a profile. Two years and countless dead end dates later I was fed up and decided to give up. Now for those of you who have used CMB, you know they don’t let you forget about them and constantly notify you to check your bagels. So after about a month of the reminders I decided to check my profile and deactivate. I kid you not, I opened the app and the first profile waiting for me was HIS. It had notified me that he like my profile which intrigued me so I kept scrolling. As I was looking I noticed our mutual friend was the Carnegie Mellon Alumni Network, which is crazy because it’s such a small school. As I was scrolling and swiping through his pics ( noticing he had the cutest smile I’d ever seen, I got a message notification and it was HIM! Normally I ignored messages that were just like “ hey what’s up” but he asked me about my interest in travel And we started talking. I was intrigued and somewhat interested but thought he was sweet and he was prompt to ask me out which I appreciated (I was always one to like to make meeting plans early as to not waste time and I would find out later he was the same) but due to both of our travel schedules it took us almost a month to final meet. So Thursday, July 26, 2017 comes around and we finally had a date planned. He decided to take me out to dinner close to where I live and the minute I met him he told me this crazy story about how he saw a peacock on his way to the restaurant ( I live in Pasadena) and I thought “wow what a pick up line but hey he is hilarious”. We ended up staying out till 2 am that night, went on 3 more dates that week, each of them just as long. After that first week I knew something was different with this guy and promptly canceled my account. 1 month later he asked me to be his girlfriend and from that day on I haven’t spent a day without talking to him. 1 and half year later, Saturday, January 26, 2019 he asked me to be his wife and I couldn’t be happier! He was the guy that made me break all my dating app rules because he was worth and later I would find out I was that girl for him, “ the girl that broke all the rules”
Tell us how you went about planning your wedding, and your overall experience with the Venues, Hair & Makeup, Outfits, Decor Theme, and all of the other important details.
I would be lying if I didn't say the wedding process was very interesting and unique for us. We originally planned to get married on March 28th 2020. We planned a large 450 person wedding at a beautiful Huntington Beach hotel. Everything was ready to go. The planning process had been a blast for the two of us and we were ready to get married! Then, two weeks before the wedding, the COVID lockdown hit and we were forced to postpone. Because it was so early in the pandemic, nobody, including all our vendors knew what to expect. The next few months was confusing, exhausting and emotionally draining, trying to figure out our next steps. We decided to postpone to December 6th 2020 and planned to have the same wedding we had planned for in March. The majority of vendors were able to stay on board and we were excited once again! Throughout the year, our vendors emailed us to check in and see how we were doing. December rolled around and COVID cases started climbing, so we decided to downsize our wedding to just immediate family in our parent's backyard. In the month leading up to the wedding. I truly witnessed the good in people. Our décor team went ABOVE AND BEYOND to make sure we didn't feel like we missed out on our wedding day, getting on phone calls with us daily to make sure our vision came to life. My make up artist was an absolute GEM, completely understanding when I had to downgrade my services to just me and a couple of bridesmaids and then making me feel like the most beautiful princess on our wedding day. Our photography team helped us set up a live stream for all our guests who couldn't be there physically and worked with us to capture some truly amazing photos of the day. We knew this year was tough on all the vendors in the wedding industry, but we were so thankful for how compassionate our team was!
How did you select your bridal lengha or wedding dress? Did you have a favorite color in mind?
Sahaj and I both decided that we didn't want to wear the traditional red, knowing it wasn't really either of our style. As a Maharashtrian bride, traditionally, I would be wearing yellow. We wanted to incorporate some tradition with our more modern coastal bohemian wedding. We decided on a white and gold (the gold being a homage to the Maharashtrian yellow) for our color scheme with touches of blue and green to match our decor. Finding my wedding outfit was by pure chance! I went on a mother-daughter trip to San Jose a few months after getting engaged. We had some spare time once afternoon and decided to look up any clothing stores in the area. We stumbled upon Swati Couture, a home run boutique and decided to take a look. Swati Khanna Kapoor was an absolute gem! she had a beautiful selection of lehnghas of all types! I knew I wanted something more modern and with a lot of sparkle and BOY did Swati deliver. I tried on a bunch outfits and got an idea of what I liked and returned home to LA. A few days later I called Swati up and she helped me custom design my perfect bridal gown with matching jewelry all virtually! She had written up notes of all the things she noticed I liked and didn't like and sent me photo samples of all her work that fit my taste so I could pick and choose pieces to create my one of a kind masterpiece. The process was a complete joy and totally stress free. Two months later, I flew back to San Jose, did a final fitting and pick up my wedding outfit!
Was there a really special moment in your wedding that constantly replays in your mind?
I think for us, the most memorable moment of the day was the SUPRISE after party that our siblings set up for us! Because of COVID and us having to downsize our wedding 2 times, our siblings knew how bummed we were not to be able to have some of our closest friends attend the wedding. After all our family left, our siblings suprised us with a fun, masked up, socially distanced backyard get together with some our friends that weren't able to come to the ceremony. They incorporated the COOKIE TABLE idea be originally planned for our wedding (a tradition celebrated in Pittsburgh, were we both went to school), as well as all the lawn games we planned to have at our original cocktail hour. They brought a brick oven pizza vendor that dished out, individual COVID friendly pizzas to all our friends and it was just such a fun way to end our special day!
Do you have any words of wisdom for Brides-To-Be?
My biggest advice to both Bride and Groom would be to take a breathe and trust each other. Sahaj was the real MVP through our whole wedding process. Planning a wedding, especially a COVID wedding is stressful and emotionally exhausting. It's something you both dream of for so long and unknowingly, you put a lot of pressure on yourself to make this day ABSOLUTLY perfect. I know I was guilty of micromanaging every little detail, but Sahaj was always there to lean on and it really helped relieve the stress and make the process more bearable. Everything thing turns our great in the end and while it's totally understandable for you to want your day to be perfect, at the end of the day the wedding is ONE DAY... you're there for the marriage and all the greatness that comes after the wedding day!
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