Anisha and Harrison

I have been so excited to blog about Anisha and Harrison's wedding! It was a wedding of firsts for us, our first lunchtime wedding, our first Indian wedding and our first wedding with two ceremonies! There were a ton of tiny details and personal touches, a few different "courses" of food and a bunch of activity stations - which made for a really really fun wedding but a challenging day for planning and staffing. In the end I was so pleased with how it turned out! The weather was perfect and the guests all had so much fun. I could not be happier with how it all ended up.

Anisha and Harrison live in Boston and got married in Hawaii for a destination wedding. But Anisha's family is from South India (I think from Kerala* if I remember correctly) and it was important to them to honor her culture by having both an Indian and Western style ceremony and touches of Indian culture throughout the wedding.

*Side note - did you guys know that I studied abroad in India during undergrad? I wish I remember more about Kerala, but the only thing that really sticks out was that there was a really liberal drinking culture (for India), it had great beaches and we all got really sunburn.

One of the coolest elements they included in the Indian ceremony was a flower blessing where every family member and friend blessed their marriage with flower petals. It was so fun! For anyone reading this who is currently engaged, Indian or not, I think it is such a great addition to a ceremony. It involved everyone, got the guests standing and moving around a bit and was a really special moment for Anisha and Harrison. Plus the pictures from this part of the ceremony are STUNNING amIright!?

After the Indian ceremony and a cocktail hour, Anisha and Harrison did a quick outfit change and headed to the western style ceremony. They had Anisha's dad officiate and it was such a lovely, personal ceremony!

After the Western Cermony, they had toasts and food! And activites! The rest of the day was jam packed with fun stuff.

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They had a smoothie bar with strawberry banana smoothies and mango lassi, woodfired pizzas, a bhelpuri station and veggie skewers.

Anisha's family are self-proclaimed ice cream aficionados. They are very serious about their ice cream and (according to Anisha) can eat gallons in one sitting lol. So, of course, for dessert, they skipped the wedding cake and served an ice cream sundae bar!

Meanwhile, there were a bunch of activities! Giant Jenga, Connect 4 and two corn hole games were set up for guests and a tie dye station complete with shirts designed and drawn by Anisha with Totoro on them.

They also had a cigar bar and a henna artist who did custom mehndi designs for the guests. So fun! I can honestly say that from all the weddings we have done, Anisha and Harrison's was the most personal and unique! Engaged couples, take note! Your wedding can be or have whatever you want - a 10 course tasting menu, a bonfire party, a petting zoo or a tie-dye station... don't let convention hold you back from the perfect day!

What was the most memorable moment of your day?

Anisha & Harrison: Our most memorable moment was definitely the blessings during the Hindu ceremony. It was absolutely incredible to have all our friends and family individually come up to bless us. Each person stepped forward, showered us with flower petals and gave us their blessing. We’ve never felt more enveloped in love than we did in that moment. Even thinking about it now makes us so happy.

What was your favorite wedding detail?

Harrison: The food. The food was the best. The variety, flavor and freshness was the best. We had chai, coffee, handmade pizzas, pakoras, veggie skewers, samosa, ice cream, lassi, smoothies, cookies - pretty much everything we could possibly ask for!
Anisha: The food was something that was extremely important to me and came out even better than I imagined! It was absolutely incredible to be able to use ingredients from the farm! We picnicked with the leftovers on a beach the next day and it was fantastic! Months later, we still have people comment about how much they enjoyed the food. I think my second favorite detail would be the tie dye. We’d designed our own shirts and bought tie dye supplies. Kate set up a tie dye station for our guests that ended up being a huge hit!

Any advice for future bride/grooms?

Harrison: Kate is awesome. On the day of, she kept telling us to stop thinking about details and logistics. It was huge to be able to just let go of those things and know that we were in capable and attentive hands.
Anisha: I totally agree with Harrison. I was nervous about letting go but Kate did a great job recognizing this and taking the reigns smoothly. Kate made sure everything went as we had planned and made it so we could sit back and just enjoy our day of celebration. Also, take up offers from friends and family to help and ask them to take clearly defined tasks. People want to be involved! We had some family and friends step in to help with details that ended up being far more thoughtfully done than if we’d done them ourselves! It was wonderful to have so many people be an active part of our wedding.

Funniest memory from your wedding day?

Anisha & Harrison: Each time someone would walk up the isle, a nearby rooster would crow.

Anisha: I found this hilarious and kept laughing which kept me from being nervous when walking or feeling self conscious standing in front of everyone. My grandmother was particularly thrilled about this detail. Unbeknownst to me, it is considered extremely good luck to have a rooster crow during the wedding ceremony!

If you could do it all over, would you change anything?

Anisha & Harrison: We would probably do a ring warming. It was one of the things that we kind of forgot about as the day went on, but looking back it would have been very special to have family and friends bless our wedding rings.

Where did you go on your honeymoon?

Anisha & Harrison: We didn’t take our honeymoon yet! One of the first things we decided when planning the wedding was that we would wait to honeymoon for a few months, if not a year, after the wedding. Our thought was that a lot of time, planning, money and excitement goes into a wedding. It would be a bummer to have that “event” excitement wane quickly after the wedding. We wanted a chance to return to normalcy after the wedding and have some romantic event to look forward to. We were also worried that we’d be tired after the wedding and would be stressed or tired during the honeymoon and not get to enjoy it to the fullest. Lastly, we wanted a chance to save up some money so we could go all out for our honeymoon. Right now, our top honeymoon picks are Bali, Zanzibar and the Galapagos.