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Real Bride Recommends- Esha Verma

Esha Verma married her college sweetheart Vivek Kumar in Mumbai. Here, she writes about her wedding planning journey and how she managed to give the traditional wedding a personal twist.

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“Before I got married I thought choosing the right guy would be the toughest decision to make. Turns out it was the easiest! As the wedding preparations began, I realized that there are tougher decisions to make. Me and Vivek were fully involved in every aspect of the wedding and were referencing for over a year to get the details right. While our wedding venue which was the elegant MCA Club at Bandra Kurla Complex was fixed unanimously, picking the sangeet venue took longer as it was held on 14th of February, the day of love. We finally booked The Club at Andheri, which is an ideal place to dance the night out.

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What helps the most in putting together such an elaborate affair is having one destination where you can get all your answers. And for us that ‘one destination’ was WeddingSutra.com. We were acquainted with the website from the time of our engagement, which was almost a year before from the wedding. Be it invite references, the latest in bridal fashion and even honeymoon destinations, it was the biggest influence in all our decisions. In fact I was particularly stressed about one key aspect, the trousseau packaging and getting the giveaways packed nicely. WeddingSutra once again played savior, they had featured gift and packaging specialist Kirti Desai (from Juhu) who I contacted and she took care of all the wedding related gifts with her splendid sense of packaging.

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Vivek himself being a wedding photographer was very particular about the wedding décor, he would keep saying that apart from the bride and groom, décor is what contributes to beautiful wedding photographs. We did a lot of research and kept saving as a reference, links from all across WeddingSutra. We wanted something that was minimalistic yet classy and that would look great in photographs too. And I had my heart set on marigold flowers, (no fancy orchids or carnations for us). The iconic ‘gendaphool’ brightens up a wedding like no other flower. We were extremely glad to have found a contemporary venue decorator like Rakesh Shroff who designed the venues for our wedding and sangeet giving us a stunning mélange of traditional and modern décor. We followed the marigold theme for our invites as well and had we two sets of invites– an understated and classy white printed invite and a more vibrant and colorful E-invite. And friends loved it as we did away with the traditional colors and experimented with something different.

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My lehengas for the wedding and reception were from Roop Kala at Santacruz and my brief to them was clear– no traditional reds. While I chose a golden and beige lehenga for the wedding the reception ensemble was a vibrant,bright pink lehenga. The sangeet costume also from Roop Kala was an orange and blue floor-length anarkali. My make up and styling for all the functions was by Mitesh who is a fashion and Bollywood make up artist while the Mehndi was by Avani who turned my hands into a beautiful canvas with her intricate designs.

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To jazz up things a little, we had a shimmery photo booth at the sangeet and went in for an impromptu slow motion video that was shot by Shrishail of Eka Films and conceptualized by Vivek. Slow motion photo booths are still a new concept and we had a ball of a time shooting it. We also did a pre-wedding shoot with Dhruvin Shah who is Vivek’s partner in crime in wedding photography. We shot at some quaint locations in Mumbai and Navi Mumbai and the results are for all to see.We managed to give a traditional wedding a personal twist, putting it all together was nerve-wracking at times but in all, loads of fun.

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Photos  CourtesyLove Dope Studios

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