One Bride & Three Dresses -AIYA Photography

 Sheetal & Daniel got married at the Park Plaza Riverbank Hotel in London on a warm Saturday afternoon in July. A week prior to their traditional Indian wedding Sheetal stepped into a beautiful white wedding dress for her civil wedding. A small and intimate gathering of close friends and family attended the white wedding just outside London. This organised bride planned her wedding (well two weddings) in only 5 months… what a superstar!

 We had 5 months to plan the wedding, so a lot of organising and prioritisation went into this, we had to start by securing a venue/caterers, entertainment, décor, photo/video, cake, everything, it was a long process, but we had to be on form, and also what made it easier was that we knew what we wanted and were looking for.

Budget…. We went over our budget!

I wore 2 Indian bridal outfits on the day, one for the wedding ceremony and one for the evening reception party. The wedding ceremony outfit was bought from an Indian boutique here in London called ‘Mongas’. For the evening reception party there is a specific Indian dress boutique in India, called ‘Seasons’, they create bespoke pieces to cater for just what you have in mind. I travelled to Mumbai to purchase this. The accessories were also purchased from Mumbai from a boutique called ‘Sia’…this is the same jeweller that has created bespoke pieces for many Bollywood movies, including the movie ‘Devdas’. The other jeweller we shopped from in Mumbai was ‘D Damas’.

The grooms outfit was a Indian ‘Sherwani’, what an Indian prince would wear. It was purchased from ‘Manyavar’ Indian Mens boutique in Mumbai.

We had a fusion of eastern and western music, and our entertainment was organised by Paragon Roadshow.

The bridesmaids outfits were a lighter pink to my outfit which were also bought from ‘Seasons’ in Mumbai

The Flowers used on the day were Roses, Ivy, geranium and this was arranged by Kavita from Kudos

The Cake was a bespoke 9 tiered wedding cake from ‘Sweet Hollywood Cakes’ by Renu Kaur. It had light gold icing, cascasding geranium flowers, diamond detailing, lemon sponge layered with fresh butter cream.

The décor was also arranged by Kavita from Kudos and the theme was Ivory, Gold & Coral Pink to match my dress

We had a week away in the Maldives, we stayed at the Velassaru resort.

The speeches were very touching, especially the Grooms speech and the maid of honours speech. Also a special performance by my nephew Rhiday which was a Hip-hop styled break dance piece.

Planning & organisation is key, we had to organise a grand wedding in 5 months which was not easy, but prioritising and putting all your wants and needs into perspective is essential. Don’t stress, everything works out to be amazing in the end and enjoy the day because it goes by so quick and you want to live every moment of it!

A big thank you to Izzy Qu from Aiya Media for the wonderful photography and video, Arjun Anand from Madhus Caterers for the organisation and planning, Sunnie Matharu from Paragon Roadshow for the lovely entertainment throughout the day, Renu from Sweet Hollywood cakes for our amazing Showstopper cake, Kavita from Kudos for the beautiful flowers and décor, Kudos Cars for our Luxury Rolls Royce Ghost. And a very big thank you to our gorgeous family and friends who we couldn’t have made it without!