Shailvi and Ankit's Indian Wedding - Real Indian Weddings

{Shailvi and Ankit’s Indian Wedding}

Last year we brought you their engagement party! Creating new traditions, Shailvi brought her baraat to the Bay for their Mumbai-themed engagement. Now, we’re bringing you Shailvi and Ankit’s Indian wedding celebration! For this Ankit and his baraat headed to SoCal for a full week of festivities. Shailvi shared all with ShaadiShop…we know you’ll love this feature!

{Proposal}

Ankit’s dream proposal was an 8 hour scavenger hunt that took me across the San Francisco Bay area. He wanted to introduce me to what would soon be my new home. Each clue led to a fantastic location. We started with a private plane tour of the Bay, which was a preview of all the places we were going to visit throughout the day. The clues took me to:

– Lunch at Rangoon Ruby in Palo Alto (delish Burmese food!)
– Ankit serenaded me while playing the guitar at Twin Peaks
– An impromptu photo shoot at Palace of The Fine Arts
– Baker Beach—where he proposed with the sun setting and The Golden Gate Bridge in the background. All of the friends that helped organize the day gathered here so we could share this important moment in our lives with them.
– Dinner at the Stinking Rose to celebrate the proposal

It was the most fun, adventurous, and romantic proposal!

{Shailvi and Ankit’s Indian Wedding Venue}

Having known Samta for a long time, I reached out to her for guidance on venues. Samta and the team at ShaadiShop helped us explore a few venues we hadn’t looked into as well as set up a rubric of how to evaluate our options. We considered about 10 venues and looked at 4-5 in Orange County and LA. Pacific Palms had everything we wanted:

an outdoor wedding
indoor reception
something grand but private

The resort has a beautiful outdoor wedding option and the grand ballroom has grand chandeliers. They were very accommodating and didn’t have any problems handling an Indian wedding. They did a great job hosting us and our guests.

{Wedding Decor}

Mehndi Decor

Venue: Parent’s home
Colors: Teal and magenta
Theme: Middle Eastern

We had tents set up in front of the house for dinner and another in the backyard for the program and mehndi artists. We rented gaddis (thin mattresses laid on the floor) to seat all of our guests. Everyone was comfortable as we played antakshri, sang and danced the night away in a traditional atmosphere. The gaddis and tents really shaped the feel of the mehndi – exactly as we wanted.

Garba/sangeet decor

Venue: Jain Center of Southern California
Colors: We wanted every color in the rainbow! In my opinion, this is one of the few events that can be colorful and organized at the same time.

The temple has a huge event room which was great to switch from performances to an open floor for raas-garba. Ankit and I wanted to ensure that EVERYONE could see the performances. We didn’t want people to stand and crowd in front of the stage so we arranged gaddis, again, for the front half of the room and chairs for the back. Our guests enjoyed the performances… because everyone had a clear line of sight!

Wedding Ceremony Decor
Colors: Fall colors & Electric purple

Fall in SoCal is still super sunny so I wasn’t looking for dark hues. I loved the electric purple we used in shades from light to dark.

We decided to go with voodoo roses to complement the purple beautifully while still sticking with the fall colors. Kamran from Kamran Hussain Designs did an amazing job putting the decor together.

We wanted to make sure our guests would be comfortable during the ceremony if it got hot/sunny. We debated between distributing umbrellas or posting a canopy over the chairs. The canopy turned out to be the better option because:

(1) distributing umbrellas added more logistical work
(2) the canopy did not conflict with the photographers/cinematographers equipment
(3) going back to our sangeet/garba pet peeve – umbrellas block guest views

Reception Decor

Colors: Cobalt blue, gold
Theme: Royal Rajasthani

Our reception decor included candles, orchids and mirrors. The Rajasthani front door in the backdrop represented the commencement of our life together. To accent the tall ceilings of the ballroom, we had 3 different centerpiece designs — all of varying heights.

Wedd(3323) — We got married Thanksgiving weekend and the resort’s Christmas decor made the wedding even more beautiful!

{Clothes + Jewelry + Mehndi}

Mehndi: Rajasthani style
I had the artist include a drawing from the scavenger hunt proposal.
I wore a white and magenta anarkali with a sparkling dupatta

Sangeet/garba: Colorful of course! I wore a beautiful orange and pink lehenga, velvet blue blouse and a pink dupatta.

Wedding: I wanted to wear traditional colors. My outfit was gold with maroon accents and a maroon/red dupatta. Ankit wanted to wear white. I got his outfits in India and he was perfectly fine with my selections.

Reception: I wore a deep purple and gold gown with Indian accents. The outfit fit my vision perfectly because it didn’t blended with the decor and was still Indian fusion.

{Traditions}

{Games!}

{Family Fun}

{1st Look}

{Ceremony}

{Reception Photoshoot}

{Reception}

{Advice}

Don’t forget to enjoy all your events! These are amazing memories you’ll want to look back on. Ankit and I had a blast at our wedding because we made sure not to sweat the small details and just have fun.

How to make sure you enjoy your big day:

(1) Take formal pictures with your guests at the wedding instead of standing on the reception stage for pictures. We wanted to be with our friends dancing, eating, and taking pictures. So glad we did that!

(2) Get the basics set up a month before the wedding. Have your vendors, menus, hour-by-hour plans and guestlists all set up ahead of time. This will ensure:

You won’t have last minute stress
The seating chart will be the only last minute thing to take care of
You can spend the last month adding fun entertainment for your guests to enjoy. We added a slow motion time machine booth which was so unique; and everyone loved it!

{Our Vendor Team}

We loved all of the people we worked with to make our wedding so memorable. See testimonials below.

Wedding Cake
Cake Korner

Caterers:

Mehndi function: Paradise Dosa
Garba/Sangeet: Jay Bharat
Wedding: Swaminarayan Mandir
Reception: Mantra Cuisine

Clothing and Jewelry
Bawree, Rajesh Sarees, Deepkala Silk Heritage, Asopalav

Decor
Kamran Hussain Designs

DJ
3D Sounds

Hair and Makeup
Angie Vaca Makeup

Sari Draping
Beauty by Rachana

Photography
Greycard Photography

Cinematography
Robles Video Productions

Wedding Planner
Blue Lotus Insights

Officiant: Praful Uncle

Rings: 4C’s Gem Imports Inc. – Haresh Hemani

{Wedding Vendor Testimonials}

Rupa and Cake Korner were such a pleasure to work with. They make the best eggless cakes in town!

The food at every event was delicious! Who doesn’t love dosas fresh off the tava?!?Paradise Dosa was the perfect intro to the yummy cuisine in store throughout the weekend. At the reception Sumeet from Mantra Cuisine had his chefs made fresh lassi (rose, pineapple, lychee) and aloo tikkis during cocktail hour! At the Jain Center you can only serve Jain food which was fine. Jay Bharat are experts! After the ceremony we served food prepared at the Swaminarayan Mandir. It’s very close to Pacific Palms so the logistics worked out perfectly and they make excellent food.

My mom and I went shopping in India the summer before the wedding.The stores weren’t bananas (like they are in November/December) and the salespeople were attentive. I wouldn’t change anything about my clothes—I’m so in love with them! Now I’m just looking for an excuse to wear them again!

Every couple getting married needs to call Kamran Hussain Designs! Kamran is the most patient and creative decorator. He can take any idea you give him and transform it into a vision of class and royalty.

Amit Kotecha was super easy to work with!

What can I say—I love Angie Vaca Makeup! Angie was so calming but fun at the same time. She will redo your hair 4 times to make sure it’s PERFECT! I would recommend her in a heartbeat to everyone!

Beauty by Rachana is amazing!! I wanted our proposal story within the mehndi design and Rachana spent extra time making sure it looked perfect.

Greycard Photography was a great team and very professional!

We love all of our wedding videos by Robles Video Productions. April, Amber, Hector and their team are great to work with! We even had them come to the Bay for our engagement party. The memories they captured will stay with us forever.

Neha from Blue Lotus Insighs is the best! She knows how to coordinate a flawless wedding. She and her staff are so easy to work with.

Praful Uncle is the best. We had requested him to translate the wedding ceremony in English as well as for the guests and he explained it all so beautifully.

Ankit: Haresh Hemani is amazing. As a diamond wholesaler, not only does he get GREAT prices, but was also able to source high quality stones. This was the first time I had ever looked at diamonds so Haresh’s explanations really helped me figure out what I wanted and what was within the budget. Shailvi loves her ring and I’m happy and thankful to Haresh for that.

ShaadiShop helped us explore venues we weren’t familiar with and helped get quotes extremely efficiently.