Happy Friday, Maharanis! We've got a terrific filmy feature to kick off your weekend with: Malavika and Jasjit's Indian Fusion wedding! With a Sikh ceremony at the Fremont Gurdwara, a Hindu ceremony at the Sunnyvale Hindu Temple and a reception at San Jose's Club AutoSport, this shaadi was held all around the South Bay Area! With beautiful photos and a heartwarming video, Wedding Documentary Photo + Cinema captured every moment of this magical day, which was perfectly summed up by a speech at 1:34: two families becoming one multi-cultural family and sharing all their traditions. After two moving ceremonies (2:05 for Sikh, 3:37 for Hindu), it was on to the reception (6:10)! Catered by the amazing team at Jalsa Catering & Events, the reception had decor from Pushpanjali Events, a wedding cake from Sweet Tooth Confections and DJ Tanveer on the dancefloor to make the night memorable! See every touching moment and fabulous detail in the full video below!
Maharani Malavika on her romantic proposal:
"For our proposal, my (now) husband whisked me off for what I thought was a spur-of-the-moment road trip to Las Vegas. I fell asleep while we were driving (also part of my husband's master plan by having us leave late at night), but when I woke up later, he revealed that we actually weren't heading to Vegas, but were on our way to Disneyland. I'm a huge Disney fan, so I was pretty ecstatic! The next morning once we reached the park, he immediately took us to one of the restaurants where he claimed we had breakfast reservations. Since we arrived there before our reservation time, he suggested we have our portraits drawn at a small caricature booth nearby. Unknown to me, he had actually spoken with the artists beforehand and they had already prepared a portrait of us wearing our favorite Disney shirts. When the artist finished and handed the completed portrait to me, I saw that it had a small speech bubble for my husband saying 'Will you marry me?' Before I realized what was happening, I turned and saw my husband down on one knee with a ring!"
On her wedding style:
"The main focus for our wedding was the reception; since we had planned for our Sikh and Hindu wedding ceremonies to be fairly traditional, I really wanted our reception to be more modern and elegant. One of the big things that inspired me was a wedding palette collage I found of a navy/deep blue and silver wedding -- I loved the simplicity of the color palette, as well as the contrast between dark and light shades and the rich jewel tones from the blue. I also loved that it was so different from the traditional pinks, reds and golds that are typical of Indian wedding ceremonies. That led me to ultimately choose navy blue, white and silver as our colors for the reception -- and we also added in some pops of purple (my favorite color) to add to that elegant feel."
On deciding on her bridal fashion:
"I definitely spent lots of hours on the internet looking at outfits that I wanted to have represented in my wedding outfits! I eventually created a personal 'lookbook' that had pictures of outfits and colors I liked for each event, which ended up helping a lot because it gave me very clear ideas on how I was hoping to look for each event and as a result I was able to pick my outfits a lot more quickly than I'd expected."
On how her friends and family helped:
"Absolutely! Our family and friends were really crucial in helping out with everything. My parents have a wonderful group of family friends who spent weeks beforehand helping to plan all the details of each event, particularly the sangeet and Hindu ceremony. My sister and one of my best friends did my hair and makeup for the Hindu wedding, which came out beautifully. Lastly, we had a bunch of friends who helped me come up with Disney-themed name cards and table numbers for the reception, just to bring in some elements from the location of our proposal and my love for everything Disney."
On her venue:
"I really loved Club AutoSport, the venue we used for our reception -- it was one of the first venues we looked at and I think both my husband and I knew that it was the right fit for us from the beginning itself. Having different vintage cars set up around different locations in the venue really appealed to my husband; and both of us loved that the overall feel of the venue was very unique, sleek and modern, which fit the style we were going for and was something we really didn't find in any other venue we looked at. It ended up being a big hit with our guests too, who loved posing with all the cars."
Have a wonderful weekend, Maharanis! We'll be back Monday with another fabulous wedding film!