From Dubai with Love – Seemanti & Peter’s Hindu Wedding

Today’s wedding comes from far away. Far far away in the beautiful Middle Eastern city of Dubai!

Seemanti and her husband Peter celebrated a three day wedding at her family home, Jumeirah Beach Hotel, AND at Atlantis the Palm Hotel.

A true big fat Indian wedding in the sense of everything: color, love, festivities!

Tell us about the wedding!
The wedding was held in Dubai, where my parents live. It was a full-on 3-day Indian wedding with a Sangeet, Mehendi, Ceremony and Reception. We wanted the celebrations to represent the most important cultural influences in our lives…Indian/Middle Eastern for me and Irish/American for my husband .

The Sangeet was true ‘desi’ style, with lots of Bollywood music and dancing but the decor was Middle Eastern. My bridesmaids and I also surprised my husband, Peter, by performing an Irish Jig that we had trained for in New York! The Mehendi was an all-ladies affair in my parents back-yard.

The Ceremony was on the beach and was a Hindu ceremony, with a proper Baraat, but we incorporated some Irish and American traditions like having a bridal party, lighting the Unity Candle and reciting Irish vows. I wore a ‘Stitched Sari’ for the Sangeet and Lehenga’s for the Mehendi and Ceremony and Peter wore Sherwani’s.

The Reception was fully American, with speeches, dances and English music and we switched up our attire and wore western clothes (me, a white Indian-fusion gown and Peter, a Tuxedo)

What was your favorite part of planning the wedding?
The most exciting part for me was to plan a dream vacation for all our family and friends that were visiting Dubai for the first time to experience a full Indian wedding. We were very blessed to have almost 80 people fly into Dubai for the week and wanted to make their stay perfect. I was also really looking forward to my husband’s and my extended families meeting as they had never met each other before.

I won’t lie though, at times it did get very stressful as I was planning a wedding in Dubai, from New York, which took a lot of coordination and weekend and late night work. At the end, it was all worth it!

What advice do you have for future brides to be?
The one piece of advice I would give future brides is what a lot of people said to me, and it is so true … no matter how much you plan, there will be last minute chaos and some things will go wrong. Don’t stress about it as you will be the only one that will notice or know if something isn’t according to plan.

Everyone is there to celebrate you so enjoy the day as it does go very fast and then all you are left with are the memories.

Thanks Seemanti for sharing your wedding. Now photos from Farnaz K Studio.

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Photography – Farnaz K Studio
Wedding (main day) at the Jumeirah Beach Hotel, Dubai, UAE
Sangeet at Atlantis the Palm Hotel, Dubai, UAE