Debika & Taki’s Hindu Wedding in Connecticut

We have a sweet, super elegant wedding for you today. Debika and Taki got married at the Society Room at Hartford in Hartford, Connecticut.

I of course spoke to Debika to hear her story. On a side note, I loved how they made a donation to the ASPCA instead of giving out wedding favors.

Tell us a little about your wedding!
My husband and I decided on an Orissi-Indian wedding. We didn’t want a huge number of guests or a long ceremony. We wanted to have the majority of the time spent eating, drinking, and having a good time.

What was the hardest part about planning the wedding?
The hardest part about planning the wedding was dealing with the invitation vendors, who were in India. The end product was amazing, but it was definitely an ordeal.

What did you do that was offbeat that made the wedding distinctly yours?
I think we did a few things that made our wedding unique: we donated to the Maryland SPCA, instead of giving wedding favors.

The MD SPCA is a great organization; we adopted one of our cats from there and I’ve been volunteering there for the past few years. They do amazing work, and we were so happy to make a gift in honor of our guests.

We had several DIY projects, and we chose not to have a florist, given how ornate our venue was. Although the food served at cocktail hour and dinner was not Indian, we did have a Samosa table.

We also had an abbreviated Hindu ceremony, and found an amazing priest that was will to accommodate our time constraints and tailor the ceremony to us.

You did some do-it-yourself projects? What did you make?!
We made the seating cards, programs, centerpieces, and favor cards (we donated to a charity).

For the programs, seating cards, and favor cards, we made all the templates ourselves in Microsoft Word. My hubby is quite computer savvy, so he was able to make everything the way we wanted it.

When we did the seating cards, we bought blank off-white cards with an ivory border from Michael’s, and we did the formatting/printing at home. All three of these elements had the same matching Ganesh motif and font.

Everything was simple, but elegant 🙂

What was your favorite part of the wedding?
In the end, I loved everything, so it is hard to pick a favorite part! I absolutely loved the venue, The Society Room of Hartford. I thought it was such a unique and elegant backdrop for our wedding.
I also loved our photographers- they did such amazing work and were so patient and accommodating.

Of course, one of my favorite parts of the wedding was spending time with our amazing guests.

What advice do you have for a bride-to-be planning a South Asian wedding?
I would definitely advise all brides to invest in an amazing photographer!