Our Indian-Persian Wedding Debriefed: Part 3 - The Execution

Lately, I’ve been getting a series of “on this day, one year ago…” memories courtesy of my social media and Google Photos. At first glance I’m tempted to close it immediately just because the sheer panic I felt during the weeks before the wedding is not something I want to relive, but when I take a closer look, what these pictures remind me of just how much resilience and faith we are capable of together when we put our mind to it. This may sound dramatic for a wedding, but in hindsight, I think the reason we felt so much pressure that it needed to go smoothly is because we had already endured so much judgment and negative assumptions about our relationship since day one. In a way, our wedding felt like the final test of whether we could truly blend our families and cultures without the conflict that so many had predicted for us.

            The wedding took place on Friday June 2nd and our family arrived the previous weekend starting with Miad’s uncle from Iran on Friday, followed by my family including aunts and uncles from India. As this was the first time in our relationship that we’ve been able to get all our family members in one location, that weekend was our only opportunity for both sides to meet and get to know each other. Things were awkward enough whenever it involved just our parents meeting and now we were adding in extended family from abroad as well as friends into the mix, so we had no idea what to expect. One of Miad’s family friends hosted a get-together following our wedding rehearsal and initially, as expected, there was a stark contrast of personalities with the Persians on one side blasting wedding music, finger snapping, and offering shots and the Indians sitting shyly in a corner taking in all the cheerful energy, but reluctant to join the dancing. Anyone who’s been invited to a Persian party knows that participating in the dancing is not really a choice – it’s mandatory. To my entire family’s shock, his aunt managed to drag my extremely reserved mom to dance circle and embrace the Persian way of celebrating. For someone who doesn’t even participate in Garba (Hindu religious dance circle) at the temple, I never thought I’d see the day where my mom willingly dances in a social setting. All the dancing, drinking, and discovering similarities between both sides led to a successful weekend of warming up to each other with a lot less awkwardness than everyone expected.

            During the rest of the week before the first official event on Thursday, a million things ranging from altering my wedding gown to picking up the alcohol was on the list for week-of tasks and it was all hands on deck with family and friends. We hadn’t planned a Mehndi (Henna) event since we didn’t really have the budget or the capacity to organize something formal and I thought it would clash with the white gown anyway, but as we got closer to the wedding, I started to regret not planning something. My friends encouraged me to make time for some kind of mehndi “hangout” even if it wasn’t formal so we reached out to a few henna artists on thumbtack and ended up finding someone who was available on Wednesday night. We ordered take out and got our mehndi done while wearing jeans and listening to Bollywood wedding songs. It may not have been fancy but I’m so glad I didn’t skip this ritual and miss out on this core Indian bridal experience.

            Another last minute change I made was to the Hindu ceremony menu. We were planning to cater South Indian food but chose to do mixed rice dishes and serve buffet style rather than the traditional white rice with accompaniments. I knew it wasn’t practical to serve rice and 15 different side dishes on massive banana leaves like they do in India, but it just felt wrong to eat with plates and utensils for a Tamil wedding, regardless of how reluctant I was about the non-Indian guests' opinions about eating with your hands. As I was placing the order for the fresh flowers and leaves needed for the Hindu ceremony, I came across circular banana leaves and the idea hit me to put banana leaves on the plates as a happy compromise. The next day I got a call from the flower company that they only had 25 circular banana leaves, but I refused to scrap the idea. I ordered full size banana leaves instead and rallied my cousins to help cut them into circles. It was a little bit of extra effort adding this traditional detail made all the difference in completing our first wedding meal.   

            The engagement/welcome dinner event on Thursday started with the Tamil ceremony and Miad’s family fully participated in all the Indian customs. As I mentioned before, my family is more reserved and since this event was mainly hosted by my parents, we had expected it to be traditional and subdued, but I guess all the bonding with the Persian side over the weekend brought out their party energy because it was my side that ended up initiating an impromptu dance floor and kick starting the celebration. Neither of us saw this level of intermingling between both sides coming, but we were happy to be proven wrong.

            Leading up to the wedding, I was constantly given the advice “at one point you just have to let go and let things figure itself out so you can just enjoy the moment.” After a very restless night and getting absolutely no beauty sleep, I woke up around 5am the morning of the wedding and still hadn’t “let go”. I couldn’t help it – there was too much at stake and I wanted everyone to be happy. Despite the neurotic level of details on my timelines, spreadsheets and to do lists, we still had a number of things go off track: the priest ended up making the Hindu ceremony at least an hour longer than we had expected it to be, our photographer’s livestream camera (for family abroad) overheated, we realized my mom’s dress still had a security tag attached, we had to scrap our plans to bring our dog in for pre-ceremony photos, we forgot to bring the Indian sweets for the dessert table, etc. The list goes on and on but the point is our wedding did not go perfectly as planned.

The Hindu ceremony was already going late and to add on, the priest was super unclear with us on what to do. My parents were talking over each other in an attempt to help clarify the instructions, the sun was blazing on our face, and I thought I was on the verge of passing out from hunger, lack of sleep, and physical exhaustion of wearing a heavy silk saree and pounds of gold jewelry. Miad leaned over and whispered jokingly, “Try to look a little happy to be marrying me.” I told him I was worried everything was going off track and we still had a whole second half of the day to account for. “Our only job today should be getting married, not worrying about unexpected issues that are bound to come up. Just enjoy the moment,” he urged me. I knew he was right. We had done our best to create a wedding that respected our cultures and families even when it came at the cost of our own preferences. At this point, I genuinely did have to let it go and I felt almost immediate relief when I finally did. We continued to have hiccups throughout the day, but once I had made up my mind that I wasn’t going to let anything else come in the way of being present, my entire experience shifted.

            After the Hindu ceremony in the morning, we had a break for guests while we changed into our Persian looks. With regards to the battle about wearing a white gown, I ended up choosing a light blush pink gown to appease any fears of inauspicious manifestations, but another complication was figuring out how to keep my Thali (Hindu wedding necklace/mangal sutra) on during the Persian ceremony. Tying the thali is the main Tamil ritual and symbol of marriage, but it’s a sizeable yellow thread with a large pendant – not exactly the ideal accessory for a wedding gown. As I was shopping for my wedding dress, I intentionally looked for something with sleeves so I could tuck the thali into the sides. The dress I liked was strapless but the store assured me that sleeves could be added to it and gave them to me separately. My mom was supposed to alter my dress once she got to LA so we only had a couple days to make any adjustments to the gown. When we added the sleeves though, the dress ended up looking awkwardly mismatched and it was way too late for any back up plan so I decided to scrap the sleeves and keep it strapless as it was designed. “But what about the thali??” my mom asked, likely panicking that I planned to take it off after the ceremony. I assured her that I wouldn’t and while it wasn’t ideal to wear with the white gown, it wasn’t worth the complication it was adding. As promised, I kept my thali on with the white gown but right before the Persian ceremony started, my mom had the idea to tuck it into my torso so it could stay on without being shown. The thali vs. white gown anecdote pretty much encapsulates how we managed to keep the essential parts of both sides’ cultural practices throughout the entire wedding – lots of creative problem solving.

            Since my family is conservative and religious, I wasn’t sure how comfortable they would feel with elements Persian ceremony, but they embraced it whole-heartedly. In fact, they were super excited about having a role and on the flip side, Miad’s side was pleasantly surprised with my Farsi line during the ceremony. Once the ceremony wrapped up, Miad and I had a quick private moment to celebrate successfully getting through the daunting parts of the wedding. We had a cocktail hour followed by our Indian-Persian dinner, speeches, and our first dance. Then we moved to the indoor portion of the venue for the party where we kicked things off with a fusion dance with Indian, American, and Persian inspired songs and the rest of the night is a complete blur of dancing and laughing.

We may have compromised on some things for the sake of our families and cultures, but we didn’t let that stop us from making the wedding representative of us. When it came to literally every element of the wedding from stationary to the décor, we tried to find a way to customize it and give little nods to our inside jokes, relationship story, and favorite things. One of my favorite things we did was skip the wedding kiss. While this is not conventional and I’m sure a lot of people think we’re weird for this, we both come from cultures where PDA is still frowned upon. I would have been fine with overlooking the cultural norms since it was our wedding, but to be honest I had no desire to kiss in front of an audience of 100+ people; it’s just not us and our discomfort would have shown. Instead, we did our secret handshake that we’ve actually had for the last 10 years and it showed our personalities in a much more fun way. I’m not suggesting that everyone should skip their wedding kiss or have Taco Bell at their reception, but incorporating little details that make you unique as a couple makes the experience much more memorable for both you and the guests.

            After more than a year of this wedding consuming my life, I could probably drone on and on about it for hours just because of the sheer amount of work we put into it, but I’m going to leave it with this. I was the bride who refused to put so much emphasize on a single day or treat marriage like my biggest accomplishment, but now I finally understand why people say your wedding day is the best day of your life. It’s extremely rare to have all the people in your life coming together to celebrate you as a couple and it’s even more special when the support comes from people who at one point opposed your relationship.  I’m not claiming that we changed every single person’s mind about mixed relationships, but after an eight year journey together and a whirlwind planning phase, we somehow managed to execute on our vision better than we ever imagined was possible. I hope this glimpse into our journey provides some inspiration for other mixed couples that despite differences and challenges, it’s always possible to find ways come together.