Punjabi & Gujarati Fusion Wedding filled with Traditions
With their roots deep into their religions, Karishma and Sunny wanted to blend together their cultures for their Punjabi and Gujarati fusion wedding. The planning of their fall celebration didn’t come without its fair share of challenges due to COVID, but that didn’t stop them from embedding traditions and having a wedding week that was one for the books. Enjoy all the parts of their colorful celebration in these photos by Soda Fountain Photography.
Haldi
From the bride: When Sunny and I met 3 years ago in NYC we had an instant connection. We have so many things in common and one of them is our love for food and traveling so, what better place to get engaged than Europe!
Proposal story: It was towards the end of our trip, we had a day to ourselves to just drive around, when Sunny said "lets check-out this cliff look out". There was absolutely no one there, just the two of us looking over the Atlantic Ocean. We were on opposite ends of the cliff and he brings me over to the middle and gets down on one knee. There was no one to capture that very moment but the next day when we flew back to Lisbon Sunny had arranged a photographer to take the most amazing pictures of us all over Lisbon. It was truly the perfect proposal in Portugal!
Mendhi/Sangeet
From the bride: If I could wrap our entire wedding in one word it would be MIRACLE! There are hidden blessings in every struggle. Our wedding was not at ALL how we originally planned or imagined due to COVID, but by staying positive and with the prayers of our parents & loved ones, we were able to have an intimate wedding surrounded by our family and for those who were not able to make it we still were able to celebrate with them virtually with our live stream crew.
Sunny & I got married in Chicago, IL and it was during the Fall season! So a little about us, Sunny is Punjabi-Sikh and I am Gujrati-Brahmin and since we are so rooted with our religion & culture we wanted to represent both religions . So yes we had a TWO traditional wedding ceremonies! Even though we were not able to have all our family and friends to celebrate our wedding week, it was important to us to include all of our traditions and rituals in an Indian wedding to be celebrated with our core family. We started our wedding with our Haldi, then our Mendhi/Sangeet, followed by the next day with the Sikh wedding ceremony and the last day we had our Gujarati wedding ceremony.
Punjabi Wedding
From the bride: The most enjoyable part of planning process was all the small details & personal touches. Since our wedding was more intimate I was able to focus on the DETAILS and incorporate "US" in our wedding. I personalized many things in our wedding such Sunnys Palla from the Sikh ceremony it has both of our names all along the border. My bridal bangles which had mine and Sunnys name on it. And my personal favorite was the personalized Coca-Cola bottles that we gifted our guests which is mine and Sunnys favorite beverage.
The toughest part of our wedding had to be wedding attire shopping. Since it was COVID we were not able to fly to India which was our original plan to do all of our wedding shopping. I'm more of a person who needs to touch and feel my dress material and beading. But I honestly had no choice so we did ALL of our wedding attire shopping at home. Isn't that CRAZY! Thank God for technology though, because FaceTime was our best friend. When it came to bridal dress shopping I knew for the the Gujarati wedding ceremony I was going to wear a Panathe which was already picked out and bought a while ago. But for my Sikh wedding dress all I knew was that I wanted a red length with a long veil. Frontier Raas was where I found my Lengha, and for my veil it took a while because I had already designed it but just needed someone to bring my vision to life! And luckily I finally found Chandhan Fashions from Canada to do so. Sunny wedding attire was a breeze, because I kind of had an idea what style I wanted for him which was ROYAL, it just took time because time was not on our side. But with great customer service from all our vendors we got all our outfits on time.
Gujarati Wedding Ceremony
From the bride: Words of wisdom to brides-to-be that I would like to give is... A piece of advice is to know that your wedding will never be perfect despite how hard you plan and how hard your vendors try. There will always be imperfections but know that those imperfections will only be known to you and not your guests. No wedding is perfect and things may go wrong, but we learned to embrace the imperfections and our wedding weekend still ended up being pure and perfect in our own eyes. Make the most of your wedding planning process and wedding day because it goes by FAST.
We think that the most important lesson we learned is that even after all of the superficial and materialistic details that go into the creation of a beautiful wedding weekend, the only thing that matters is the end result, that we married each other. The goal of a wedding is to marry the person you love and everything else (décor, entertainment, food, music, and dancing) is second. At the end of the day, you married the person you fell in love with in front of your closest friends and family members and that lesson is priceless.
Wedding Pro’s:
Photography: Soda Fountain Photography
Videography: Paragon Films
Event Design: Shaadi Creations
Venue: Ashyana Banquets & Venuti’s
Stationery: The Paperie by Aman
Event Planner: Dream Events by Sonya
Cake: Chicago Pastry
Dress Designer: Frontier Raas
Catering: Ashyana Banquets
Beauty: Dollhouse