A Delhi Wedding With a Canadian Chinese Bride: Hedy & Gaurav!

A canadian chinese bride, in a traditional red wedding lehenga and one big melting pot of  Punjabi culture. Sounds fun enough? It was fun, frolic and much more when Hedy and Gaurav tied the knot at a traditional Indian wedding in Delhi recently.

Love those glittery pumps

 

Red Bridal Lehenga by Frontier Bazaar

 

 The bride speaks...

How they met " We (Gaurav and I) met three years ago when we were both working in a tiny country in East Africa, called Burundi. At the time, he was running an Indian restaurant and I was working with the UN. My friends, colleagues and I always went to eat at his restaurant almost every weekend as it was the best in town! We then met through a very good mutual friend, and as they say… the rest is history .

My friends and family loved the experience. They flew in from Canada and other countries to attend the wedding – and for many of them it was their first time in India. To many still, India is considered this place that one has to visit at least once in their lifetime. Everyone was so open and interested in all the ceremonies and rituals.

They loved participating in the events; everything was so meaningful and unique for them.

So you guys were in a different countries and the wedding was in India??

" The challenge with organising this wedding was that Gaurav and I were still living/working in different countries abroad, so we had to organise everything from a distance with the help and support of his family in Delhi. For the groom’s outfit we started shopping for it once Gaurav arrived in Delhi. It took two days of shopping around, but we finally found everything at the big Manyavar shop in Karol Bagh.

As for the wedding lehenga, I was currently working in Bangladesh, so I thought it might be worthwhile to find a local designer in Dhaka to design my wedding dress so that I would not have to do last minute shopping in Delhi for my outfit just before the wedding. I found a designer here  two months before the wedding, and it took long for her to do my dress. When it was finally done – it was just too…simple. Like a village girl. Call it miscommunication or whatever, but I found myself in a situation where I didn’t have a suitable wedding dress three days before I was supposed to leave for Delhi. It was a bit of a fiasco! She was a good designer of clothes, but maybe just not experienced enough with Indian bridal dresses. I don’t regret trying things out with her though, since I like supporting local designers where possible – in the end she did help design my mehendi and mom’s wedding outfit, which turned out great.

I started immediately searching online about where to go get bridal lehengas in Delhi and came upon Mehak’s Brides by P&B service. As I didn’t have much time left, I decided to get Mehak’s  help in  just guiding me which shops to go to for my budget and in 5 days time . She gave me a very useful list of places to shop and by the end of my first day in Delhi, I found the bridal lehenga I was happy with from Frontier Bazaar in Karol Bagh. Luckily they were able to tailor/fit everything in just five days, in time for the wedding. Accessories were fairly easy and I got most things at South Ex, which has a bunch of good one stop shops! It was a close call but everything worked out in the end!

 The Wedding Vendors 

Photography- Amit Video Vision Bridal Makeup- Chandni Singh Bridal Lehenga- Frontier Bazaar Groom Sherwani- Manyavar Wedding Invitations- www.emailweddinginvitation.net