Our Indian-Persian Wedding Debriefed: Part 2 - The Planning

During our nine years together, Miad and I have navigated through long distance, prejudice against interracial relationships, long distance, multiple cross-country moves, residency match, training our insubordinate Australian Shepherd, and countless other "growth opportunities" as the corporate world would call it, but I can say without any hesitation that planning our wedding was the worst one yet. Even today, I get a visceral reaction when wedding planning is mentioned. I get even more triggered when people imply that "it can't be that bad if you're organized." As someone who had literally created a Smartsheets Timeline for my wedding (it had a Gantt Chart and everything), the logistics of planning was the least of my troubles. What made the process so draining was juggling the varying priorities of Indian, Persian, and American norms without triggering emotional arguments - all while we both worked very demanding full time jobs. There were countless moments of spiraling when we seriously considered scrapping the whole thing.

After we had finally landed on having our wedding in Los Angeles with separate Indian and Persian ceremonies, selecting an actual venue was our first big task. We had always envisioned a vineyard wedding and considering California is one of the world’s major wine regions, we thought this would be a breeze but since we had to account for all sorts of factors the average couple probably doesn’t, it wasn't as straightforward as anticipated. We needed a ceremonial fire for the Hindu rituals but most outdoor venues in L.A. don't allow any sort of fire, especially in the summertime. If we did find a venue that allowed it, we needed to make sure they had availabilities on the specific dates and windows we needed according to auspicious timing. My parents who were accustomed to Indian wedding planning timelines (three months or less) were skeptical when I stressed the urgency of booking at least a year in advance. “That seems like a long time, they’re probably exaggerating. Let’s just wait and see.” my dad said repeatedly, sending my anxiety through the roof. 

We also had issues finding a place that allowed us to choose our own catering and serving generic American food at our Indian-Persian wedding felt borderline offensive. Anyone who knows us know we live to eat. Food is such a big part of our cultures and even bigger part of our relationship. We love cooking, eating, and most of all – sharing our food with loved ones. So when it came to our wedding menu, we did not want the food to disappoint. Using a range of resources from TheKnot.com and WeddingWire to stalking random people's weddings on Instagram for venue ideas, we stumbled upon one in Topanga Canyon that wasn't quite a winery but had the same rustic ambience we were going for with farm tables, wine barrels, and all. It also happened to have a Persian owner who was fully onboard to work with us to create our own menu, so it was a no brainer. We decided to finalize this venue for our Persian ceremony and mixed reception, but since they couldn’t bend on the fire restriction due to the local regulations, we still needed a spot for our Indian ceremony.

We considered having it at a Hindu temple, but I was reluctant to force guests to come to a religious space that they’re not familiar with. We also looked into AirBnB but their rules around events and “parties” were a nightmare to navigate. My morale was at an all-time low when I luckily stumbled upon Peerspace and found an outdoor deck where the fire restrictions didn't apply. We instantly fell in love with the mountain views and Italian cypress trees, but the only catch was the max capacity of 70 guests since our total guest list was at about 140. While we would have loved to have everyone attend all our events, by this point it was January 2023; Our wedding was less than six months away and we were desperate for a venue that worked, so we made the difficult decision to keep the Indian events limited to a smaller guest list.

If you're considering a non-traditional venue, look into Peerspace! It was a fraction of a typical venue cost and there are a lot of unique locations. It requires more work to figure out all the pieces (furniture, catering, layouts, etc.) but you have a lot of freedom to customize the event as you want to. The place we chose actually hosts intimate live music events so if you live in Southern California, check out Lower Deck Sessions for a cozy night of great music.

Asian cultures tend to have a lot of long-standing beliefs and customs that sometimes don’t have any clear explanation i.e. some colors bring good fortune and others are forbidden, certain family members have specific roles in the ceremony, and everything from the direction the altar is facing to the flowers used to decorate should be auspicious. I’m not going to sugar coat it – we had a lot of arguments around these restrictions. Miad and I didn’t want to follow these customs blindly but it was a challenge coming to an agreement when our parents were equally stubborn. A lot of immigrant families in America bend the rules on these traditional customs because it's not always practical for modern weddings, so I had hoped our parents would be flexible as well, but it turned out to be an uphill battle that I didn't have the energy for, so I just gave in.

For example, a mid-ceremony outfit change is required for the Tamil engagement and wedding.  The bride is presented a new sari as part of the ritual and must change into it immediately to symbolize the union. While I appreciated the sentiment of this practice, this meant we needed to make sure there was some kind of designated space in our outdoor venue where we could go to change. There were also a ton of rules about what colors I could and couldn’t wear. I had to wear red for the wedding and I wasn’t allowed to wear any shade of white since it’s a color associated with death in Hindu custom. It was interesting getting my mom to digest the fact that I would have to wear a white gown for the Persian ceremony.

Another conversation that got unexpectedly heated was regarding our wedding cake. We had always seen ourselves as doughnut-wall kind of people anyway but the debate that followed the comment “We’re not having a cake, we're having doughnuts” lasted about 3 hours…the first time we talked about it. We had several follow up arguments on the same topic and ended up doing a both doughnuts and cake. While our cake turned out delicious and felt extra special because it was made by our friend, it was another unexpected task and expense.

Speaking of expenses, debriefing a wedding without mentioning budget at all can be misleading and leave too much room for assumptions so I want to be transparent about how we approached it. Since it’s customary in Indian culture for the girl’s parents to host the wedding and it’s customary in Persian culture for the boy’s side to, we were fortunate to have our parents help with the wedding expenses. Transparently, if we didn’t have help from our families, we probably wouldn’t have had a wedding at all or just stuck with our private elopement idea. Wedding costs today are outrageous and with Miad still in residency, our main priorities were saving for our future, tackling student loans, and keeping up with expenses of living in a city like Los Angeles. As I mentioned in Part 1, it’s a cultural norm for families to be heavily involved in planning and hosting the wedding, so sharing the expenses felt fair enough to us. Obviously this might not be for everyone and is a conversation to have as early as possible.

Managing a budget for something like a wedding requires extreme organization, diligent record keeping, and maintaining communication with all parties, but managing financial sheets is literally one of my job responsibilities so this part was a breeze. Again, the stressful part was getting everyone to agree on where to splurge vs. where to hold back, especially since this was a shared budget. We bickered about everything from customary wedding gifts to paying for guests' hotel rooms, but these issues paled in comparison to the main driver of cost: the guest list.

While cake vs. doughnuts and room service bills were battles we had to have with our parents, finalizing the guest list was the only issue throughout the entire wedding planning process that Miad and I did not see eye to eye on. If you’re having a tiny wedding, it’s easy to ensure that no one is offended since it’s private by nature and if you’re having a regular-sized Indian wedding (huge American wedding), it’s easy to invite everyone you want. In our case, we were somewhere halfway and had to heavily analyze who made the cut between our parents’ guests lists, Miad’s and mine all while accounting for the physical restrictions of our venues.

At the end of. the day, we have no regrets about who we invited so it feels silly to even think about the arguments now, but at the time, our guest list used to keep me awake at night. We had a strict limit on our venue's max capacity but some of our guests weren't even familiar with the concept of RSVPs because weddings in India are basically on an open-invite basis. My parents would make comments like "So and so said they might bring their friend to the wedding but tbd" and meanwhile I was trying to design a layout on Microsoft Powerpoint trying to determine how many chairs we could physically fit in our venue without having people on top of each other. Our wedding coordinator would email us asking if our guest count was confirmed and I had to keep responding with guesstimates since reality was a number of RSVPs were still up in the air.

In the weeks before the wedding, we were barely sleeping, surviving off takeout, and our apartment started to resemble an Amazon fulfillment center - all while we tried to find time to choreograph a fun wedding dance, not lose or gain any weight to avoid fitting issues with our wedding clothes, and coordinate travel plans for all our friends and family arriving early. It was 3 weeks before the wedding when we suddenly remembered we never booked our honeymoon hotels and Miad spent a whole evening on the phone with Costco Vacations trying to find a resort that actually had availability for our dates so we wouldn't wind up homeless in Fiji. We had been careful in allocating our budget but the closer we got to the wedding day, I was ready to swipe my credit card on anything and everything that would make the process smoother because we were so desperate to find any way to put out all the different fires.

Actual footage of our apartment two weeks out

One year of planning somehow flew by and it was the night before our first wedding event. I had a borderline mental breakdown on the drive back to my apartment from our family's AirBnB after a long and exhausting day of frantic last minute errands that never seemed to end. There were less than 24 hours to go and my wedding gown still wasn't altered completely, favors needed to be arranged, my nails weren't done, we had barely practiced our dance, and my family was asking for favors like taking them to the L'Oreal company store and giving them a Tesla test drive (which, to be clear, I would happily do anytime other than the day before my wedding). I just wanted to fast forward to our honeymoon but then remembered I packing for that was on my to-do list too. When I finally arrived home that night, Miad made me take some deep breaths and assured me that we would figure it out together and everything would fall into place. I prayed that he was right and left the rest up to the universe...to be continued in Part 3.