Our Hin-Jew Wedding

We meet:
Keith and I could not be more different. He likes it cold I like it hot. He's a linear thinker I'm a circular thinker. He was raised on Long Island, New York; I was raised in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. He's an American of Eastern European, Jewish descent; I'm American of East Indian, Hindu descent. He comes from a divorced/remarried family and he and his mother do not get along. I come from an arranged marriage - Indian family and my mother calls me 3 times a day just to see what I'm doing. With all of these distinctions, it's a wonder we met, let alone got married.

Keith and I met at a party of our mutual friend Shelli, eight years ago. I thought he was cute, he thought I was cute, but we were both in the process of seeing and breaking up with long-distance relationships. Let's just say it was not love at first sight. Throughout the following year, I kept seeing Keith at get-togethers and we started becoming friends. We then began taking each other as dates to weddings and parties. It wasn't until a year after we met that we actually started seeing each other romantically. And we found that while we are really different outwardly, we have similar souls.

We date:
In the seven years we've been together, we've been through quite a bit. Lots of job and residence changes, a dog, my going to graduate school, his having a mini-stroke, so many break-ups and get-back-togethers that we actually lost count, couple's counseling, and attending forty weddings. No, that's not a typo, in the past few years especially; all our friends seem to have gotten married. On one hand it was a great way to meet each other's family and friends, and on the other hand, it got to be extremely tiresome to hear someone ask, "When are you two getting married?"

We move in together:
We moved in together after dating for five years. For both of us, it was like we had gotten engaged. And when we talked about a real engagement about a year later, Keith felt like he wanted to be the one to make it official, so we agreed that he would ask me at some point, but that there would be no ring. I didn't want to be the only one in the relationship wearing a symbol of our engagement. We ended up deciding that a digital video camera would be a nice engagement gift that we both could use.

We get engaged:
On Labor Day weekend of 2001, my parents and my brother came into town. So we invited Keith's aunt and uncle over to dinner at our apartment in San Francisco. My mother made one of her fabulous Indian feasts and we sat down for an enjoyable dinner. Right before dessert, my brother left the room and Keith announced that he had something to say. My brother came back into the dining room holding a sparkling new digital video camera and filmed the whole proposal.

When we told my best friend Steve, who is a successful art director in Los Angeles, what we were planning, he coined the term 'Hin-Jew Wedding'. And it stuck.

We plan the wedding:
During the planning, we talked to a few interracial couples where one of them was Hindu, and they all either held a full Hindu ceremony and a full Western ceremony to appease both sides of the family, or they had one or the other only, or they eloped. We didn't meet anyone that combined the ceremonies into one. It seemed that most people didn't combine because they wanted a religious ceremony and couldn't find a religious officiator that would agree to combine the ceremonies. But Keith and I, not being terribly religious decided to write our own ceremony that reflected our lives and spirituality together.

We took a weekend and got out of town. We went up to Mendocino, California where we let our dog roam around while we drank wine and talked about our ideal wedding. You would think that two really different people would have a hard time coming to an agreement on how to throw a wedding... but we didn't. We agreed on almost everything! This was a first for us. Maybe it was the wine, maybe it was being in Mendocino, but we came up with our ideal ceremony in one go.

We decided on a non-religious ceremony and reception that would be a mixture of Hindu/Jewish and Indian/Western customs and traditions. So we bought a couple books that explained to us what made up a Jewish or Hindu wedding ceremony and what the rituals and traditions meant. We then picked whichever ones we liked and discarded the ones we felt were not egalitarian enough or were too religious for our tastes.

Books:

Vivah: Design the Perfect Hindu Wedding by Meenal Atul Pandya and Bansi Pandit
The New Jewish Wedding by Anita Diamant

Personal review: I thought that the Pandya/Pandit book was too vague with not enough information, and the Diamant wedding was very religious, but with excellent information.

Invitations: We used William Arthur off-white folded cards. The outside had a drawing of two pears that our artist friend Dan drew in black and white:

For more of Dan's artwork, go to: http://www.artistsregister.com/artists/CO1225

On the inside we used a passage from Walt Whitman's poem, "A Passage to India":

Lo, soul! seest thou not God's purpose from the first?
The earth to be spann'd, connected by net-work,
The people to become brothers and sisters,
The races, neighbors, to marry and be given in marriage,
The oceans to be cross'd, the distant brought near,
The lands to be welded together.

Location: For a while, Keith and I spent every weekend looking at locations. We looked at places that would hold a large group, and we ended up deciding on the Silverado Country Club and Resort in Napa, California. We chose the Fairway Deck, a huge balcony looking over the golf course with a white organza tented roof, as the ceremony site, and the Silverado Ballroom with it's beautiful chandeliers, for the reception. The Silverado grounds themselves are stunning and our guests would be able to stay there, visit Napa, go to the spa, and play golf if they wanted to.

Silverado is known for their golf course, food, and service. While they rent out their location at a cheap price, they get you on the food and drink. But the food is so good you forgive them. We had special meetings with the executive chef there who ended up making samosas and chutneys for us from my mom's recipes. Also, we brought in our own wine and champagne and even with their corking fee, it still came out cheaper. Plus now we have lots of leftover wine!

Welcome bags: My mother, friends, and I put together bags that would be given to our wedding guests as they checked in. They contained water bottles, chocolate, trail mix, ladu (Indian sweets), chevdo (Indian trail mix), an agenda for the weekend, and a list of nearby restaurants.

Huppa/Mandap: Conveniently, a canopy type covering is a part of both a Jewish and a Hindu ceremony. My friend Steve, who designed our huppa/mandap went with my mother went to Little India in Cerritos, California one day and bought tons of brightly colored chiffon saris that he ended up draping from the center of the Fairway Deck tent. It looked amazing:

It was also Steve's idea to have everyone sit in theatre-in-the-round style seating. This gave everyone a good view of the ceremony.

Clothing: Keith wore a handsome black Armani suit with a golden yellow tie that had tiny red designs on it. He also wore a white French cuff shirt and used a pair of gold cufflinks my parents had given him when we got engaged.

I went to the Sari Palace in Berkeley, California and special ordered a custom-made gorgeous red and gold wedding lengha (skirt and top). It had tissue, net and brocade material, and was really exquisite. My mother then gave me her jewelry that she had worn during her wedding. It was still incredibly beautiful. I felt like such a queen.

My mother found a gorgeous pink sari in the style of the movie, Kabhi Kushi Kabhi Gham at the Sari Palace too.

Bride's and Groom's men and women: After attending 40 weddings and being in at least 5 of them, Keith and I decided that we didn't want a 'traditional' wedding party where people would all have to wear the same outfit. (I have 4 in my closet that I will realistically never wear again.) Instead, we told our 'attendants' (24 of our closest friends and family members) that we'd like the men to wear a dark suit, and we'd like the women to wear a brightly colored outfit. Then during the ceremony, we want them to light a candle and sit down.

As it turned out all the women ended up going with me to the Sari Palace and buying one or two outfits there - on their own volition! Even some of Keith's female family members bought saris or chania cholis, or lenghas. And everyone looked spectacular. It made for a very colourful wedding.

More on the Sari Palace: It's located at 1000 University in Berkeley, Ca. People from all over the US go there to shop. They really have the most amazing and current styles. The owners are also great. If you go, ask for Asha, and tell her that I sent you. Beware of their tailors though... they're not always interested in doing what you might want...

Flowers: We did not do any bouquets. After attending 30 weddings as a single girl, bouquets became the bane of my existence for a while. It made me feel inferior, like I needed to catch this thing or else I was heading towards spinsterhood. It also made me feel old because usually, the only other females waiting to catch the thing were teenage girls. A couple times Keith's stepmother hunted me down and made me stand right behind the bride. One time she caught it herself by taking out a 12 year old girl and then handed it to me.

So we kept our flowers simple. Keith and I each had a garland of marigolds, roses, and gladiolas. Then we sprinkled the cake table and the centerpieces with rose petals, marigolds, and gladiolas.

Centerpieces: Again, these were Steve's idea. It really helps having a professional who knows your taste do the artistic stuff. We had a large round mirror that laid flat on the table in the center. On the mirror was a 3-inch tall large round glass dish that we filled with water. In the bowl we floated large orange marigolds and red rose candles. On the mirror rim, we sprinkled red and magenta rose petals, and placed two pairs of green pears (pairs of pears) with lavender gladiolas and votive candles. The result was romantic and lovely.

Favors: Since we were getting married in the wine country, we found this company that made refrigerator magnets in red and white wine bottle shapes. We put Dan's drawing in color on it with our names and date of the wedding. We then put those in little red bags and placed them on the tables. For more on the favors, see: http://www.pandasgift.com

Photography: This is where we splurged. We wanted great photos and we wanted our negatives afterwards (not very easy to find). We hired a woman named Deborah Horn and she was terrific. We met with her before we hired her and she really seemed like someone who would take the kind of pictures we were looking to have.

Videography: We just wanted someone who would document our wedding and not put together a kitschy wedding video with music and silly shots. We hired a guy named Mike Tunick and he was fantastic. He was so great we barely noticed him. And he was able to burn some DVDs for us. For more info see: www.tunickvideo.com

DJ: We decided on a DJ rather than a band because we needed more diverse types of music-and it was much cheaper. We hired a DJ from a company called Good Time DJ. We told him from the start that we did not want him saying anything on the microphone. We were afraid of getting a DJ that wouldn't stop talking... or would make us do a limbo... But this guy was great. Whatever music we requested that he didn't have, he went out and found, including Bhangra music, Garba music, Latin music and Hava Nagila!

Ceremony musicians: We used a string trio called SF Strings run by Eugene Chuklov and his wife. And again they were wonderful. We told them what kind of music we wanted and didn't want, and they made sure they got the music we wanted even if they didn't have it. For more info see: http://www.sfstrings.com

Cake: One of the best things about throwing a wedding is that you get to taste cake! We ended up going with a company called Sweet Finale that made the most exquisite chocolate cake with a raspberry filling. It was a small 3-tiered cake with plain white frosting and then chocolate renache dripped all over it. There was hardly any left! For more info see: http://www.sweetfinale.com and ask for Joan Ketchmark.

Cake tip: it's cheaper to get a small 'show cake' to cut and then have a big sheet cake to give out to guests.

Two nights before:
Mehndi/Henna Party: opted not to have a bridal shower because we didn't want the wedding to be about gifts. So instead, I invited all my female friends (and Steve) over for a mehndi party. I hired a woman named Deepa to come over and do mehndi for the women. She was great, but there were so many women, that my friend Steve and my cousin Seema picked up mehndi cones and started doing some too. It all came out great, and it was a fantastic experience for Western women to see mehndi in action. My little cousin Tulsi did a cute dance and we watched parts of "Monsoon Wedding" and other movies with mehndi songs in them. Some of the guys, after they got back from taking Keith out, got some mehndi too.

The night before:
Rehearsal dinner:Keith and I invited all of our attendants, our immediate families, and our aunts and uncles to have dinner with us after the wedding rehearsal on the night before the wedding. Our friends set up a PA system and people were able to give toasts (and roasts!). There was a lot of crying and laughter. It was a wonderful night. We had people come from all over the world: India, Russia, Mexico, Costa Rica, and all over the US.

The day of:
The Wedding Ceremony: We are so proud of this... Everyone came up to us afterwards and said they had never seen anything so moving, personal and a true mixture of our cultures.

Procession: The string trio began playing "Con Te, Partiro" by Andrea Bocelli. Mercedes, our officiator (whom we got legally ordained online at http://www.ulc.org) walked in first. In front of the huppa/mandap, there was a table full of candles (one for each person that would be lighting one). Mercedes lit a couple taper candles outside the candle arrangement. These would be used by the 'attendants' to light a candle within the arrangement. She then proceeded towards the huppa/mandap and stood underneath it.

Our attendants came in two-by two, lit a candle and then sat down behind the huppa/mandap.

The string trio switched music and began playing "Imagine" by John Lennon. Keith and his parents walked in. Keith looked amazing. His parents lit one of the center candles and they sat down. Keith went to stand by Mercedes. Then I came in with my parents. I was so overwhelmed at the beauty of everything before me. I wanted to take it all in and remember everything! My parents lit the other center candle and went to sit down. On the way to her chair, my mother playfully grabbed Keith's nose, bringing in a Gujarati tradition.

Keith and I then exchanged garlands in the Hindu tradition of 'jaimala'.

Welcome: Mercedes said a welcome and then told everyone a story about Keith and I as a couple about how we chose each other, learned to listen and help each other, and about how hard we worked on and continue to work on our relationship. We then started on the traditions and rituals that were important to us.

Rituals: First we fed each other Indian sweets as a symbol of the sweetness of life and our sustenance of each other (Hindu). Then we drank wine from the same goblet as symbol of the bitterness and progression of life (Jewish).

We then took seven steps around the 'fire' that our closest friends and family had lit for us. In a Hindu ceremony, the fire is a witness to the marriage and a purification of the wedding itself. With each step, Mercedes read the following commitments we were making to each other with each step (these were translated for us by my mother):

  1. To share the responsibilities of your home and life
  2. To fill your hearts with strength and courage, and encourage each other
  3. To have mutual respect and trust and live in harmony
  4. To acquire knowledge throughout your lives
  5. To keep your family healthy and prosperous
  6. To cherish and support each other in sickness, health, joy and sorrow
  7. To remain life-long partners

After going around the fire, we read our vows that we had written ourselves to each other. There was not a dry eye at the ceremony after we were done. Keith talked about how his ability to love is directly related to his ability to trust, and that he trusts me. I talked about how much I love him, his mind, soul, and 'hot body', which got more than just a few laughs...

We then exchanged our rings. And Mercedes read a wonderful poem by the Lebanese poet, Kahlil Gibran:

Love one another, but make not a bond of love,
Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls,
Fill each other's cup but drink not from one cup,
Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf,
Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone,
Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music,
Give your hearts, but not into each other's keeping,
For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts,
And stand together yet not too near together,
For the pillars of the temple stand apart,
And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other's shadow. "
Mercedes then pronounced us husband and wife and we kissed (a couple times...)

Recessional: The last part of our ceremony was the Jewish tradition of breaking a wine glass wrapped in a napkin. (A little known secret is that it is actually a light bulb, because it's easier to crush and it makes a better sound.) Keith crushed the glass and people yelled "Mazeltov!"

The string trio began playing Beethoven's "Ode to Joy" and Keith and I left.

We then did another Jewish ritual called "yichud' where the bride and groom go off on their own into seclusion and eat something before joining everyone for the festivities. Silverado had put a plate of hors d'oeuvres and champagne in a small conference room for us, so we were able to relax, talk and eat.

Photos/Cocktails: While we were getting our photos taken with family and attendants, our guests were enjoying some hors d'oeuvres, champagne, and punch on the Fairway Deck.

Photo tip: If you're going to have a photographer, assign someone who knows the majority of your friends and family to be in charge of the photo shoot. You need someone who knows how to be in charge and knows what photos you want so they can organize everyone.

Reception: After our guests were seated, my brother (who was my best man) announced us (using our own last names since I kept mine.) And we went right into our first dance, which was "Satellite" by Smashmouth. We love salsa dancing, and this song gave it a modern twist with great lyrics.

When we finished dancing, my father gave his speech-which was really some of the nicest stuff he's ever said about me. My brother then gave his bride's best man speech-which brought the house down. He's very funny. And then Keith's eldest brother (his best man) gave a very warm and emotional speech.

Food was then served. We had spring mix salads with avocado, heirloom tomatoes and Enoki mushrooms (our dog is named Enoki, so it was fitting). For the main course, the choices were salmon, chicken, and vegetarian pasta. The food was incredible! And while our guests were eating, Keith and I took the opportunity to visit the tables and try to get some pictures with people. We had placed those little disposable cameras on all the tables, but only one or two out of each camera was any good.

Right before the main course, we did the father-daughter dance. My dad and I danced to Roy Rogers' "Don't Fence Me In" and Keith and his step-mom danced to Billy Joel's "I Love You Just the Way You Are."

The dance floor officially opened with "Roller Coaster of Love" by the Ohio Players. All night the music alternated between bhangra and Western music and everyone was dancing to all songs.

At some point after we had cut the cake, my aunt grabbed the microphone and had everyone doing a Garba. (An Indian folk dance where people dance in circles clapping hands to traditional music.) When we finished with that, Keith's aunt grabbed the microphone and had everyone doing the Hora. (A Jewish wedding dance where the bride and groom are hoisted up into the air on chairs and everyone dances in a circle to the song "Hava Nagila.") It was loads of fun.

When the reception finally ended, there were still lots of people there. It was really the best party I have ever been to.

Post-wedding thoughts:
Now that we're back from our honeymoon (2 weeks in Bali, Malaysia, and Singapore) people keep asking us if we have 'post-wedding blues' or if things are different now that we're married. And we both can honestly say that

If there was any advice I could impart on a couple getting married I would say this:

  1. Pick your battles carefully. This means with each other and with your families. Stick to your guns on the things that are important to you.
  2. Don't fuss too much over the details, because on the day of, you won't even remember what you asked for.
  3. Try to get a wedding planner. Ours made our day so easy. We didn't have to worry about anything. She took care of the wedding license and all the little things. Her name is Michelle Usher and I highly recommend her.
  4. Practice smiling. The wedding really is the biggest photo shoot of your life.
  5. Really think about what a wedding and marriage is about and how you want to show it. Don't do traditions and rituals just because everyone does them, or that's the way it's always been done. Research them and find out why they are done, you might find that you want to create some of your own rather than using one that stems from questionable beginnings...
  6. Above all else, have fun with it!