Hello, Maharanis! The amazing planning team at Ambiance by Tejel is bringing us the most exciting Indian wedding today, and the talented folks at Wedding Documentary Photo + Cinema perfectly captured every moment of it! This dazzling celebration lasted three days, starting with a sangeet at Mayuri Restaurant (3:27)! R&R Event Rentals created gorgeous glittering decor for the party; we especially loved the curtain backdrop and umbrellas! The blushing Indian bride also wore a fabulous orange lengha from Vama Designs Indian Bridal Couture for the event! The sangeet at The Fairmont San Jose was a fun night full of spectacular performances and lovely decor from Shakor Decor (4:21)! The next day, it was back to The Fairmont San Jose for the ceremony and reception! At the reception, the Maharani and her Raja were able to thrill their guests with an incredible first dance performance, thanks to dance instructor Joya Kazi Unlimited (4:10)! Check out the video below to see it all!
Maharani Kriti on meeting her Raja:
"Amit and I knew it was love at first swipe when we both swiped right on Tinder that day. We had both just downloaded the application too! Can't get luckier than that. After he messaged me first, the conversation started awkwardly flowing since neither of us were very good at this online dating thing and I was terrified when I found out he was a doctor that maybe he knew my mom... turns out he did. He actually interned with her best friend at Kaiser Santa Clara. That was awkward. But he seemed nice and I was hungry and wanted a free meal so I agreed when he invited me to dinner on August 2nd. We met up at the Vintage Wine Bar first where I told him I was running late and showed up 2 minutes later with him nowhere to be seen because he was listening to the A's game in his car (such a romantic). He shows up, we awkwardly hug and sit down and in all my nervousness since it was my first online dating experience I asked him 'so why are you single? It couldn't have been a more hilariously awkward first date, especially when he took me to the one place in Santana Row I dislike with a passion - Pizza Antica. How do you eat pizza on a date gracefully? It's just not possible. I was so nervous I remember nothing about any of the conversation except that he talked about the 49ers for a while and was impressed by my very minimal knowledge of them.
After that first date, we met up for some casual dates after that where I was convinced he didn't have feelings for me and just wanted a friend. He even tried cooking for me (which included making ranch dressing from scratch which did not work) and ended up with me cooking the pasta for him. I didn't burn it! It took him forcing me to watch 3 scary movies (which I hate) to finally realize that I liked him and make a move. A month later he asked me to be his girlfriend in San Francisco on the Golden Gate Bridge - to which I said yes and then proceeded to realize I had left my wallet in the Uber and we went on a romantic expedition of find Kriti's wallet somewhere in SF. I think that's when he knew he loved me. I was still figuring it out. Hehehe"
On the ultra romantic proposal:
"It started with a Christmas Present from Amit - Taylor Swift Concert tickets with a coded note on the back that said:
'Dear Kriti,
Mary Christmas. Pack your bags. We are flying to ? On Saturday December 27th.
Love,
Amit'
Saturday morning comes around and Amit asks me for a list of the places I think we are going:
1) San Francisco
2) Napa
3) Seattle
4) Portland
5) San Diego
6) Las Vegas
I was so annoyed when the plane was stopped in LA, but that was just the layover! I was super stoked when Amit finally told me we were going to VEGAS!
Amit surprised me again by taking me to the Paris Hotel - which I had never stayed in before! We had a gorgeous view from our hotel room at night! We spent the day wandering around the strip, eating dim sum in the hotel, and grab drinks at the Cosmopolitan. I still had no idea that he's going to propose because he convinced me that he would do it in January.
Amit tells me to dress in a blue dress and keeps asking me to fix my makeup and jewelry (super offensive haha) - that set off alarm bells for me because he's typically very unhelpful with the girly stuff. But I was still convinced he would do it in January and just thought he'd been watching too much Bachelor. Plus he's normally pretty romantic like this (I bagged a good one)!
He took me to the Eiffel Tower Restaurant and even though they had a personalized menu, beautiful roses on the table, and a gorgeous view of the Bellagio fountains, I still had no clue!
They bring out a special dessert plate and then open it and it has the ring in an Eiffel Tower ring box surrounded by rose petals and Will You Marry Me written in chocolate! I started crying because there was no food on the plate and didn't stop through the entire proposal. Amit apparently did not hear me say yes when he asked me the question, but he put the ring on me anyway. It was incredibly romantic and he timed it just so the fountains would be going off in the background! Couldn't have asked for a better proposal.
And then we lived Happily Ever After as Mr. & Mrs. Saxena... lol no we did not elope in Vegas despite my repeated requests to do so. Amit even gave me another surprise with his parents and sister there to congratulate us at lunch in Vegas! That was really sweet and fun!"
On choosing a wedding theme:
"Oh gosh this is hard. Honestly my wedding theme changed SIGNIFICANTLY. I wanted really flowy drapes and glass and candles everywhere, but my parents wanted a traditional open mandap with tons of floral arrangements (which I did not care for). We managed to come to a middle group when we found a beautiful mandap arrangement courtesy of Fine Linen Creations and Terry was willing to work with us to add all the traditional elements my parents required. We had to include my nontraditional style though by hanging a mistletoe bouquet at the entrance so our bridal party had to blow each other kisses walking in haha!! The aisle arrangements were gorgeous as was the beautiful Ganesh and draping outside the wedding hall. De Young Flowers took care of all the floral and candles for this event. We wanted the colors to really contrast the reception colors so we went with red, magenta, and orange all mixed in with pops of green mistletoe for the x-mas feel.
My reception theme was always a Winter Wonderland one since it was during Christmas time. I really wanted to show off the manzanita centerpieces with beautiful white and blush pink florals and romantic candles. With the whole silver and blue and white theme, it was pretty easy to coordinate my vision! It was so lovely that the Fairmont was already decorated for Christmas and the beautiful lights in Christmas in the Park made for a really fun baraat and pre-reception shoot! We even got to sit on some of the rides for our pre-wedding shoot with our bridal party which was a highlight for all of us."
On her favorite part of wedding planning:
"The love from my friends and family! I truly had no idea how deeply some of these people cared about me and my loved ones. It was so moving to see such a large and diverse group come together, take care of us and of each other and make all of our dreams come true! We had some surprise performances and speeches that brought us to tears and gave us some of our best memories of the wedding!"
On choosing her wedding outfits:
"I went to almost every single wedding dress vendor in the Bay Area. After looking everywhere, I found 2 of my dream dresses right by me at Sagar Exclusive. Unfortunately they were both in red and I couldn't wear red for both the wedding and reception. Varsha Patel is a phenomenal designer and she worked with me to recreate one of the red anarkali lenghas into a blue and silver masterpiece that I wore in my reception! She customized it to make it sleeveless and very comfortable for me since I was really claustrophobic and it was absolutely perfect! I spent almost 2 months looking for a dress and the fact that I found both my dresses with her in one day amazed me. We ended up getting all my bridesmaids' clothing from her and almost all of my jewelry and other event outfits from her as well. Even the groomsmen and family outfits all came from Sagar Exclusive - they were wonderful to work with and made us feel like family!"
On the best moments of the wedding:
"There were too many to list here but these are definitely our highlights:
Playing the dhol with my husband and dad up on stage at the end of the night (thanks to Wicked Entertainment for trusting us with their instruments and letting us go wild)!
Our first dance was MAGICAL! Looking into my husband's eyes and forgetting the rest of the world was a glorious feeling. We relive this moment every day! But I will never let him live down the fact that he almost dropped me in our final dip (supposedly the dance floor was more slippery than the floors we had practiced on haha)
Cutting the cake I was so hungry instead of feeding it to Amit I started eating it myself until Vijay scolded me gently haha!! Poor husband.
My brother's speech made everyone in the reception tear up. He captured our entire romance so well and even managed to dig up a transcript of my Tinder messages with Amit and read our awkward initial conversation out loud! Oh my gosh we were so embarrassed, but it was really cute!
My Rajput Sangeet/Mehndi Ceremony decor done by R&R Event Rentals truly blew us all away! They went above and beyond all of our expectations! We fully intend to work with them for future events."
On their first dance songs:
"Oh gosh we had a mix because we simply couldn't choose. We really wanted to prank our families so we wanted to start out with a slow romantic song and incorporate something in English for our non-Indian friends, but then switch to something naughty that was way more suited to our personalities. We started with 'Jeena Jeena' and moved on to 'Tu Chahiye.' Next was 'Let's Get Married,' then 'Rukhmani Rukhmani' (omg the reactions were awesome) and finally 'Dil Bole Hadippa.' Our entire first dance was choreographed by Joya Kazi - she was fabulous to work with and we had such a blast learning this dance. We still do it today because it's so romantic!"
On her hair and makeup look:
"I picked Myrium Haye Shan to do my makeup - from Laenka by Myrium. Both her and Lin did a great job on both mine and my mom's hair and makeup for all three days! I let them wing it since I had faith in their work after our trials and my beautiful engagement shoot. Every look was absolutely flawless and I am very grateful for making me feel so lovely! My husband certainly appreciated it"
On the huge role her friends and family played:
"They helped out with everything and we could not have achieved this wedding without them! To give you some examples our friends and family: decorated our house, arranged for food for breakfast, lunch and dinner every day of the week for our guests at the home and hotel, coordinated transportation for all of our out of town guests (about 72 total), helped my bridesmaids get ready, helped my mom and I get ready, taught us how to conduct the ceremonies, negotiated with vendors with us, wrapped all of our return gifts, stored everything we did not have space for, and so much more! I really wish someone had told me earlier on in the planning to ask for help and not hesitate to take it!"
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