By Sreesha Vaman, co-founder of Sari Closet

In high school, 16 years ago, I spent a summer as a hockey camp counselor.  One of my campers was a six-year-old Chinese-American whirlwind-on-skates named Sean. One day, one of the Caucasian-American dads came up to me and asked about how Sean was doing. I thought it was very rude that he was asking me about another camper, and told him as much.

Turns out he was Sean’s father.

Waiter, may I please have some pepper with that foot?

Interracial couples are fast becoming commonplace here in America, as the melting pot of cultures integrates even further.  According to the Pew Research Center, 14.6% of all new marriages are of interracial couples – a rate that has doubled since 1980. Further, over 60% of people surveyed by Pew said that they would approve of a family member who wanted to marry someone outside of their race. At Sari Closet, the online sari rental service that I co-founded earlier this year, we are seeing similar trends amongst our customers.  And as more South Asians marry more non-South Asians, the demand for blended cultural experiences has grown exponentially.

But what is the best way to hold an interracial wedding? One way is to cheat, like I did: we held separate events for my (Muslim) wife’s community and my (Hindu) community. But the last event was really not fun, which is the “writing of costly cheques” ceremony.

Interracial weddings — like interracial marriages — are most successful when both cultures are equally represented.  The best man at my wedding, who was from Germany, married a lovely woman from Japan. Not only did both cultures get well represented in the decorations and food, but both fathers downed ceremonial pints of a blend of Loewenbraeu and Kirin Ichiban.

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Sonali and Shyam’s wedding mandap was so fabulous that we’re at a loss for words. Design 2 Decor created an Eden-like garden setting inside the beautiful Liberty Grand venue. Enough talkin’—look, enjoy, drool! Read more

“Dulhe ka sehra suhana lagta hai….”

As female editors, we usually fawn over the bride’s attire before even laying eyes on the groom. But in this case we couldn’t help but showcase the groom first! Shyam’s pearl-encrusted sehra is worthy of a maharaja and has us dreaming of handsome young princes and white horses…

But, if Shyam has us daydreaming, Sonali has us drooling at her beauty! Check out her maharani-status jewels after the jump!

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In our last post, you saw how anxious Sonali and Shyam were to see each other. These two lovebirds could hardly contain their excitement when they finally met. See for yourself!

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Engagement shoots have become a staple of the wedding process. It’s the one day couples get to be as carefree as possible and get to do as many retakes as they want to. While most couples go for the standard picture-perfect E-shoot wearing flattering white outfits in a park setting, Sonali and Shyam decided to tell a story through their engagement shoot. With the help of their amazingly creative photographers at Kumari Photo & Design, this inspirational couple took their love story back to a different era. Take a look!

Kumari Photography:

“Trains have a romance which  trump all other ways of traveling. The tradition of long train journeys is a little more sterile and much less characteristic today then the days of yonder-year. However if you look close enough, you can still find that lone trench coat traveller, heading off in the wee hours of the day eagerly awaited by their beloved.

This quintessential scene pulled straight from 50′s romance movie was the inspiration behind the our latest engagement shoot with Sonali & Shyam. Having spent the past few years riding the rails to and from Toronto to Montreal to be with each other, Sonali & Shyam’s relationship was a movie..err photo shoot in the making.”

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After Sara and Joel’s intimate unity wedding ceremony, they headed off for a costume change and a different mood for their fun-filled reception. Joel looks like the perfect Desi groom in his sherwani, swinging his beautiful bride around on the dance floor!

Sara:
“After the ceremony, we had the reception, which we started off with the traditional rusmat ceremony (looking at each other in the mirror, exchanging garlands, and feeding each other).  We followed with dinner and speeches, and our first dance (we danced to Diana Krall’s ‘The Look of Love’ and we took lessons to make it more interesting).  And then we all danced and partied the night away (sort of – mostly it was just me and my friends).  We had the DJ play a mix of American and Hindi music to try to make it fun for everyone there!”

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The more fusion weddings we see at The Sari-Clad Bride, the better we feel about the world. We are all truly becoming global citizens and working towards creating a unified world culture that transcends race, ethnicity, religion, etc. Couples like Sara and Joel show us that love doesn’t have to be defined by anything other than pure emotion.

But planning a wedding that incorporated Bangladeshi Islamic customs and Filipino Catholic rituals wasn’t straightforward.

Sara:
“We carefully crafted a ceremony that made it clear that while we were coming from Catholic and Islamic backgrounds, we were looking to each other and finding the similarities in our traditions, which included having faith in a higher power and the importance in family. We wanted to illustrate how important it was to us that our families were being supportive of our relationship in light of the fact that we were from different religions and cultures.”

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