reflections on our wedding
this post is part feelingspoast, part how-to-throw-a-wedding, and lots of pretty pictures
Table of Contents
How I Felt
This section was written soon after our wedding, in October.
I got married on Sunday. I’m still processing; I wasn’t prepared for how emotionally intense the whole experience was, although it feels obvious in hindsight.
But I was so focused on logistics leading up to the wedding that the emotional component was set aside. In the weeks leading up to the wedding, our officiant and close friend, Daniel, attempted to talk to us about our ceremony multiple times. We always hand-waved it away like “yeah, yeah anything goes, we’ll talk about it later.” He finally corralled us on the day before our wedding.1
I didn’t write my vows until my wedding day (I woke up at 5 am to write them, so that I’d be free to spend the morning with friends and family). The emotional components of the wedding were almost an afterthought, second to more pressing concerns like finalizing the venue and the photographer, helping with logistics for out-of-town guests, and hosting events during the wedding weekend for our friends and family to get to know one another (our parents had never met before!). Those details were important to me and I’m glad I put thought into them, but they also almost crowded out the key reason we were gathering: to celebrate Andrew’s and I’s love and commitment, and the communities who have supported us throughout our lives.
The wedding definitely had an into-the-rabbithole feel, like the days leading up to the wedding became more and more surreal. There’s so much love and care in the air, and so many tears, and it’s wonderful, and a lot. We were surrounded by friends who we’ve known for so long that they’re more like family, and family who have known us since before we knew our own names.
There's a component of showmanship to a wedding. You're in every picture of course, and you only get one chance to get married and you'd better hope you look good and that your skin is okay (mine had been acting up all week), and you've paid a lot of money for the photographer, and all your friends and family are dressed up too.
And you're standing up front and you have to say your vows, which is just a little like public speaking, which… is not something I love. Andrew’s the extroverted one, he's the one who stands up at every party we host and thanks everyone for coming, or gathers them for lightning talks.
Bridezilla
Our wedding was late on a Sunday afternoon.2 If you had asked me on Sunday morning if I was stressed, I would have said no. If you were to ask my close friends who had been with me throughout the weekend, they would have said no. Earlier that morning, my best friend told me that I seemed very chill.
And yet mid-monday morning, a few hours after writing my vows, I told Andrew that the vows included a portion that's more like a speech, where I speak directly to our wedding guests, and then Andrew said vows couldn't include a speech, and then I started crying and didn't stop for 4 hours.
Even though I was on top of everything, the wedding was a big lift: the logistics, organizing our friends and family, handling family tiffs, our parents meeting for the first time, speaking publicly…I didn’t realize I was stressed until I realized I was stressed.
And so, seeing that I was having an emotional breakdown that only Andrew could help, my friends cleared out and ran errands, and I spent the afternoon laying in bed with Andrew and finalizing my vows and eating tacos from Uber Eats.
(Apparently the bride and groom aren't supposed to see each other on their wedding day, but I didn't realize this until later, and also with the stress of an impending wedding I couldn't imagine someone I'd rather have by my side than Andrew. Reject tradition, retvrn to snuggles).
By the afternoon I was feeling a lot better. I had re-written the vows that I had first drafted at 5 am and I was much happier with them, and excited to read them to Andrew at the wedding. I’d spent time relaxing with Andrew, and refused to get out of bed until much later than was practical, which made my inner rebel quite content. I think in the weeks leading up to the wedding I had been focused on our guests, and now I returned to being focused on myself.
My friends checked in on me on occasion, with gentle worry and the softest of nudges. Finally I got out of bed and did my makeup with makeup they lent me.3 I had planned to wash my hair before the wedding but I had run out of time by laying in bed too long; Luckily my hair looked great anyways.
I got dressed and my friends helped me with my jewelry and accessories. They were all getting dressed too and everyone looked so beautiful.
Andrew was simultaneously getting ready in the front house (our Airbnb was a duplex). He was also running late cuz he’d spent the morning taking care of me. My friends and I caught an Uber to the venue and arrived exactly on time, at 4:45 pm (the ceremony was scheduled to start at 5 pm). When I’d left the house, Andrew was still in boxers with his sister taming his hair, so he was definitely going to be late.
I felt very relaxed though, and everyone was in a good mood. I used the extra time we had before Andrew arrived to get our wedding photographer to take photos of the gals looking cute.
Andrew arrived, but still wasn’t fully ready. He sat on the venue porch with his mom and dad and siblings all tending to his hair and outfit. I asked if he’d remembered the ring, but he’d left it in his pants pocket back home. We sent one of my best friends and one of his best friends on a shared mission to retrieve the ring.
This meant our wedding was further delayed, so we decided to have the photographer take a bunch of the traditional wedding photos before the ceremony, while there was still good light out, rather than after.
This was actually a really fun start. Our photographer was so competent and playful and made us all feel like stars.
The ring keepers returned, and we got ready to start the ceremony.
The Wedding
I didn't cry during the wedding, even though Andrew was convinced that his vows would make me cry, even though both my best friends started crying after the ceremony and kept walking away from me to try to collect themselves, even though the ceremony was perfect in every way (many thanks to our officiant Daniel Golliher). I think it’s because I was running on adrenaline. (Also, I had already spent 4 hours crying that morning; perhaps there were just no more tears left).
After the ceremony, I hugged all my friends and family and ate pizza and there were incredibly touching speeches made about us and I coordinated to make sure there was vegan food for our vegan guests which I’d requested ahead of time but seemed to have been forgotten. I was very happy.
The End
We flew out the next day. Andrew and I had separate flights home for a variety of reasons and my flight out was the very last one out of all my family and friends. So I slowly said goodbye throughout the day and there were more tears, but not from me, and my best friend and I had a spa day at the Waldorf Astoria before we each took red eye flights.
And then my Uber driver dropped off my best friend at her terminal and we said goodbye and then he dropped me off at my terminal and I went inside and suddenly I felt the adrenaline rush end and it was like a wave of emotions hit me all at once. It was surreal. And I got changed into cozy flight clothes and I went through an empty security line and I sat at my gate 3 hours early and I breathed in and out of my nose very deeply and intensely, and I couldn't tell if I was going to hyperventilate or just in a weird trance state. And I felt such extreme exhaustion, both emotional and physical. I wished for a big cozy bed with clean sheets and lots of pillows and the comfiest comforter, but I still had a 3 hour wait and a 5 hour flight.
How to Plan a Wedding
Planning a wedding is strange because you’ll only do it once (well, hopefully). So there’s a lot of little questions that will be new to you:
Where do I get a dress?
How many guests do I want?
What city should we host it in? What venue?
How do I find a photographer I like? Do I even need a photographer if I’m having a small casual wedding?
What aesthetic do I want?
Here is how I addressed the major questions that came up for me. Maybe they’ll be helpful to you if you’re planning a wedding too.
Venue and Size
Andrew and I attended his brother’s wedding in March. It was a really lovely wedding. We loved how it was small and intimate, and how the venue was beautiful and dignified but also modest and comfortable. We loved how their ceremony was short and cut out all the fluff. It was just the good parts: the vows, which made us cry, the “I do’s”...bim bam done. The ceremony was so short that they didn’t even have seats for their guests, we just all stood around the altar. We loved that too. Their speaker system for the procession song was played on a bluetooth speaker operated by Andrew’s little sister.
Afterwards, I joked to Andrew that it was a lovely wedding and we should just copy and paste it. Well, joke about the outcomes you want folks, because Andrew checked with his brother and sister-in-law and they were touched that we liked it so much and genuinely happy for us to imitate it. Although we weren’t technically engaged yet, we asked his parents to keep the decorations in their garage, so we could re-use them. The arch is from their wedding! (Among other small decor items).
The venue is small and can only hold 30 people, so that became our limit. We doubted ourselves on this a few times; Andrew and I are very social and there are many people in our lives whom we love. In the end, I’m glad we kept it small though. At that size, and via organizing several events throughout the weekend, and a few other thoughtful interventions that I’ll discuss later on, I felt like all our guests were able to mingle and get to know one another deeply. Our family and closest friends got to have meaningful experiences with one another, and that meant a lot to us. By the wedding evening, it felt to me like one cohesive group.
City
We hosted our wedding in Phoenix, which is where Andrew grew up. We also considered San Francisco, a city we love and lived in for several years, and about an hour away from where Priya grew up. And we considered New York City, our adopted home that we also deeply love.
In the end, the guest list determined the city. We knew we wanted our family and childhood friends there. Andrew has a bigger family than I, and his childhood friends are Mormons and all settled down in the city they grew up in. My childhood friends are yuppie millennials and scattered to the winds; only 3 of our wedding guests still lived in the Bay Area.
Logistically, hosting a wedding in Phoenix meant fewer people had to fly in or find places to stay.
Phoenix is also a more affordable place to host a wedding than SF or NYC, and has a big airport that’s reasonably priced to fly into.
Airbnbs
With my friends and family flying in from all over the world to attend (from as far as Thailand), I wanted to maximize time hanging out together, and time where people from disparate parts of our lives got to know each other.
Rather than staying in hotels, I got one big Airbnb for my friends, and another Airbnb a few minutes walk away for my family.4
Phoenix is a car city, but I didn’t want people to feel isolated and have to Uber to every place. So I booked our airbnbs on the edge of downtown. We walked to coffee and meals every day, and only took Ubers to special events.
We also hosted a few low-key events at the Airbnb. The night we arrived we had our friends over — my childhood friends, Andrew’s childhood friends, and our mutual adulthood friends. For most, it was their first time meeting each other. And the next afternoon we hosted a henna party where all our friends did henna on each other.
Andrew has many friends and family in Phoenix, but it was nice to use the Airbnb as a dedicated hosting space without feeling like we were intruding on someone else’s space.
Dress
I dislike shopping. I rue the day that I spend more than 20 minutes in a store.
Where does one buy a wedding dress? I didn’t know, but I preferred if I could buy online to avoid a shopping trip. But: if I bought online I wouldn’t be able to try on the dress to ensure a great fit, so I didn’t want to spend a lot of money only to have the dress look bad on me.
I bought this dress for $30. It arrived, it fit okay, I liked it but didn’t love it, and I also didn’t want to continue shopping for a dress. I considered looking for a new dress and then I never did. I considered getting it tailored and also never did.
Accessorizing helped tighten up the look though. In particular, I pinned this headband to my waist as a belt, and then tied it in the back. This helped cinch the dress at the waist and made it look a lot better on me.
Makeup
I kept my makeup simple. I didn’t think about my makeup ahead of time and ended up borrowing makeup from my lovely and stylish bridesmaids.
Shoes
I tried wearing heels but then the heels poked out from under the dress, and I preferred the look where the dress went all the way to the floor.
Plus Andrew is average height and I slightly preferred our height differential if I wore flat shoes, although I’m not that opinionated.
And I rarely wear heels and didn’t want to trip, and our ceremony was on grass, which I worried might be uneven or have holes. Finally, I injured my knee a few years ago and now it’s prone to getting tweaked on occasion, so I try to treat my knees with great care.
I ended up wearing the same shoes I always wear.
Hair
I had planned to wash and style my hair the morning of, but I ran out of time because I cried for too long. Luckily it ended up looking fine. I had bought Keratin It’s a 10 and put it in a two days before, and I think that helped.
Indian Aesthetics
I’m half Indian and I wanted my wedding look to be Indian-American fusion.
I wore a necklace and earrings that belonged to my grandmother.
I also bought a tiara that reminds me of Indian aesthetics (in particular I was reminded of the halos around statues my parents have on display, similar to this).
Before the wedding the tiara looked tacky and cheap, and I wasn’t sure if I was going to wear it. But with my makeup and henna and cinched dress I thought it looked pretty sick. I also had a second tiara that Shein sent me by accident, so we took one picture with Andrew wearing it too.
I also knew I wanted henna on my arms, which is something almost all Indian brides get. I thought about hiring someone to do henna for me. But henna artists in NYC are pricey, and if I hired an artist only I would have henna, not Andrew or our guests. Instead we hosted a henna party the day before the wedding, and most of my family and friends did henna on each other or themselves. For most of them, it was their first time trying henna. They had tons of fun, and everyone’s henna looked beautiful.
Our friend did henna on Andrew’s hands, and another friend did henna on my hands and arms. Neither had done henna before, although one of them has a lot of experience decorating cakes. We were quite happy with the outcome.
Do Whatever You Want
Of course, if you love fashion you should definitely spend more time and possibly more money on your aesthetic. But I wanted to share my approach too just so y’all know it’s an option, and because I have a deep belief that people often spend too much time and money on things that don’t matter. If you don’t like shopping, don’t do it. If you don’t want to get your hair done, don’t. Don’t do anything you don’t want to do; life is too short.
Photographer
At first I didn’t think a good photographer mattered. I didn’t imagine us as the type of family that printed and framed our wedding photos and hung them in our hallway. I honestly wondered if we would ever look at our wedding photos after going through them the first time. I guess I imagined wedding photos as generic or stiff.
I informally polled our married friends and family about their weddings. Having a bad photographer was many people’s biggest wedding regret. Some people just went with the photographer that their venue offered, without doing their own due diligence. Some hired friends or friends of friends who weren’t very experienced. Others tried to save money by hiring a more affordable photographer, but in the end wished they’d spent more for a better photographer. (One even had a photographer who somehow lost all the family photos taken after the ceremony).
I only looked into a photographer about a month before our wedding. Apparently this is considered last minute; a good wedding photographer might be booked out 6 months in advance. So I was a bit stressed that I wouldn’t find anyone I liked. I reached out to a group chat of Phoenix-based friends, and they sent me a handful of Instagram accounts of photographers they knew or liked in the area. In the end I chose a photographer who had gone to high school with a friend of ours. I loved the photography on his website, and his “about me” page.
He did an amazing job. I felt at ease throughout the wedding by the way he carried himself. He made everyone feel comfortable, gave great direction, and occasionally stopped to show us the photos he’d just taken (and they were always amazing). He somehow managed to be in every place at once and got great photos of every single one of our guests, and of every segment of the ceremony from a variety of angles.
I give him my highest recommendation. If you are based in Phoenix, hire him!
Budget
We didn’t go into the event with a set budget, but using the same venue as Andrew’s brother (a fancy pizza parlor) and keeping the guest list small (30 people) helped keep costs reasonable (for us).
Venue, food, and open bar: $4822.13
Photographer: $1015
My dress and accessories: $52.20
Andrew’s suit and accessories: ~$10006
Henna tubes for us and our guests: $65.167
Total Cost: $6954.49
If you’re on a tight budget, I’d recommend trying to host your wedding in a family member or friend’s backyard, since the bulk of our wedding cost was the venue.
My sense after investigating the wedding photographer market and talking to friends is that you get what you pay for. I didn’t come across any good wedding photographers under $1000. Our photographer is still fairly young and I think we got an amazing deal compared to his competence and quality…I’m excited for him to blow up and raise his rates! [edit: I have since checked his site and his wedding rates have doubled; well deserved!].
So I guess there is a small amount of alpha in searching for a photographer through your network (thus yielding photographers who might not be as publicly known) and having good taste (allowing you to choose a photographer based on your own instinct rather than outside validation). But still, I wouldn’t skimp here.
Invitation
The last few weddings I’ve attended have sent me paper invites. That felt unnecessary to me. Paper kind of sucks as a technology: you can’t edit the invitation over time as you finalize plans, you have to gather everyone’s addresses and physically mail stuff, and some guests (ahem, me, at other weddings) will forget to pack the paper and then text the bride or groom for basic details.
We used Partiful, our favorite event website of all time. (I’m a huge shill for Partiful. I’ve emailed them like 4 times to tell them I love their product. I follow them on Twitter and I tell all my friends about them. I think they might file a restraining order).
With Partiful, we were able to send out an initial invite as soon as we’d secured the venue. Then over time we updated the invitation with extra details.
Partiful also has a feature that enables you to text all your guests. I would have liked to use that feature during our wedding weekend, but unfortunately a handful of our friends and family never actually RSVPed via Partiful, they just texted us to say they were coming. If I did it again I would push people to RSVP to enable easier text coordination.
Getting Your Guests to Mingle
Many of our guests had never met each other before. Our families had never met each other. Andrew’s childhood friends had never met my childhood friends, and most of our childhood friends had never met our adulthood friends.
For many of them, this might be the only time they’ll ever meet. It’s almost certainly the only time all our guests will be at the same place at the same time.
We wanted the most important people in our lives to have a chance to get to know each other, but we were all only in town for a weekend. Plus, we weren’t sure if our friends and families would naturally click, given varying backgrounds and life experiences.
The two things that helped my guests mingle the most were:
I sent out a “Who’s Who” document that included a photo and short description of each of our guests. This lead people to skip the small talk and ask more interesting questions of each other. It also took away some of my guests’ anxieties about getting people’s names wrong.
We hosted events throughout the weekend. At our first event Friday night, Andrew’s friends and my friends barely mingled. By Sunday, there was a lot of warmth and comfort and intermingling within the group.
Planning A Ceremony
Neither Andrew nor I are religious, so we had a lot of flexibility with the ceremony.
We were inspired by Andrew’s brother’s wedding, which we had attended 6 months before. They kept their ceremony short and sweet, with only the best parts: the vows, which made us cry, the “I do’s”. They didn’t even exchange rings.
We mentioned this to our friend and officiant Daniel, and then he planned the ceremony for us. This was his third time officiating a wedding. Getting registered as an officiant is a quick and easy process. But Daniel takes the role very seriously. Before officiating his first wedding, he took a class on the wedding customs of various religions.8 (Although neither Andrew nor I realized this until the day before the wedding. LPT get yourself some overly-competent friends).
He sat us down on the morning before the wedding to ask some final questions like:
What song will play while you walk in? We chose When the Day Met the Night.9
Who will be upfront with us, if anyone? We chose to have it just be us. We wanted our close friends to enjoy watching the ceremony, and to have a good view.
Do you want to hold the rings or have someone else hold them, and bring them up when we reach that part of the ceremony? We chose to have a very close friend hold the rings.
How are you two walking in? Are you walking in together? Is someone “walking you down the aisle”? We chose to walk in together, just the two of us.
Who would read their vows first? Andrew wanted to read his vows first.
What would our vows be written on? Would we hold them, or have someone else bring them up when we reach that part of the ceremony? Andrew wrote his vows on a piece of paper and kept them in his pocket. I wrote my vows in a notebook, and had a close friend bring the notebook to me when it was time to read them.
Daniel was so organized and thoughtful about our ceremony, and we really couldn’t be happier with the end result.
Names
Andrew and I combined our last names. His maiden name is Roberts and mine is Ghose so we conjured the name Rose (ROberts-GhoSE). I told my family weeks before the wedding and they were supportive.
At my bachelorette brunch the day before the wedding, I mentioned our new name in passing to Andrew’s sister and sister-in-law, assuming they must already know we were changing our name. They did not; Andrew had forgotten to tell his family at all 😅
This lead to a short bout of stress, but all was resolved in the end.
I adore our new last name even more than I thought I would. Neither of us liked our last names much — mine, “Ghose,” was confusing to pronounce, and Andrew’s, “Roberts,” was commonplace and boring, and Andrew complained that it was like he "had two first names" (Andrew and Robert).
Also I liked the idea of sharing a last name with Andrew and our future children, and I didn't like the idea of taking on a hyphenated name or adopting my husband's name. So combining names seemed like a practical decision.
What I didn't anticipate is how fun it is to refer to Andrew as "Mr. Rose" and how fun it is when he calls me "Mrs. Rose," and how it feels different somehow. The shared name change makes me feel like we're even more of a unit. A united front.
Our friend Sam was officiating her cousin’s wedding around the same time, and she had the same experience. She told us that it felt like she was taking the wedding more seriously than her cousin 😂. I suspect that’s common because the bride and groom have so many other logistics to plan. So I’d recommend getting yourself an officiant you really love and trust, who you can outsource the ceremony process to completely.
We hosted a late afternoon wedding in order to beat the Phoenix heat. The weather was in the 90s that day.
Despite larping as a Functional Female Person, I don’t own any makeup. Heck, when Andrew met me, I didn’t even own a bed frame; buying one was his pre-condition for moving in. In my heart of hearts, I am a basement-dwelling engineer 🥰
I stayed in the Friends Airbnb, for my sanity 😉
Thank you to my cousin Shreya for this brilliant idea.
Andrew realized a few weeks before the wedding that he’d lost his only suit sometime in our moves between SF, Phoenix, and NYC over the last two years. I’m glad that prompted him to buy a blue suit though, he looked great! Also, it’s kind of funny that Andrew’s suit was a significant portion of our wedding expenses. But men can re-wear suits for many events, whereas a wedding dress is only worn once, and all the other costs were for one-time goods. A truer budget would amortize this cost across many events.
I haven’t done henna much, and I wanted to be on the safe side, so I bought way more henna than we ended up needing. I highly suggest hosting a henna party for your friends before a big event. It’s surprisingly easy to do, and so much fun, and the end results are beautiful.
Daniel recommends getting ordained through the American Marriage Ministries and taking their training. This page on the parts of a wedding ceremony is also helpful!
We love this whole album, Pretty Odd by Panic! At the Disco. It has special emotional significance to us, because Andrew showed me this album on our third date and we ended up laying on the couch and listening to the whole thing.
Thank you for sharing this reflection. I'm planning a small, simple wedding for the Spring and your thoughts were super helpful. Especially loved the henna and the tiaras!