Stephanie, Engineering Professor & Prajwal, IT Professional and Wanna-Be Writer
On Saturday, August 31, 2013, we visited eight Bay Area wedding venues on a grueling ten-hour, 120-mile day. We ended up reserving a county park picnic area—we weren’t sure we would need it, but it was cheap, it was a spot we loved, and we wanted a fallback option. The next day our brother and sister-in-law helped us print nametags and make some calls. Later that week we signed the contract for our caterers, booked a site for the Friday night event, emailed our guests, and completed our vows.
How was this week different from what other harried, stressed couples experience all over the world? For starters, that marathon-day of venue shopping was exactly one week before our wedding. The location for the Friday night event was finalized two days later, a mere five days before our wedding. We paid for our rentals two days after that as we completed our vows while sitting in the grass at a local park. And that wedding email? The most difficult, gut-wrenching email we ever had to write was sent the Tuesday before our wedding. We emailed our guests to tell them the rustic “summer camp wedding weekend” we had planned for six months was definitely being moved from the Sierras because of the third-largest wildfire in California history. We sent it from Praj’s laptop at his work cafeteria. Stephanie cried after we clicked send.
Our wedding ended up being breathtakingly beautiful in no small part because we were lucky to find a county park nestled among California redwoods. We were also blessed that our first-choice caterers could serve over two hundred people on a week’s notice, and that we found a vendor with enough linens and cutlery—albeit just barely—for our large group. But what made the weekend truly stunning was the fact that our family and friends made it happen. As we walked down the aisle, we had no idea how our café lights had been strung through the redwood trees, where the professional-quality sound system came from or what games awaited our guests on the lawn. But we loved everything that we saw, every game that we played, and every note that we heard.
If we had to pick a few highlights from those crazy days, they would be:
W-Minus Fifteen Days
A groomsman alerts us to a news article describing the evacuation of the summer camp where we planned to get married because of smoke from the nearby Rim Fire. We are calm. Fifteen days? Surely we’re fine.
W-Minus Nine Days
It begins to sink in that the fire may not be contained in time. Although no final decisions are made, we email our guests to make them aware of the situation. We end with a plea for help, “If you know of any potential backup venues in the Bay Area, please let us know. Or better yet, call them up, then let us know.” In what became a running theme for the next nine days, call they did! The place we eventually had our rehearsal dinner received calls from at least three separate guests.
W-Minus Seven Days
Aforementioned epic day of venue shopping. We pray that if we have to use the county park we reserved, the rangers would let us stay past sunset. (They did, and our first child will likely be named Ranger Steve in honor of the one who made it happen!)
W-Minus Five Days
The US Forest Service and camp directors make the final decision: no wedding in the Sierras.
Late that night, we sent out a Google spreadsheet with every vague, random task we needed help with: Find P and S a place to spend their wedding night; secure buckets and ice; make the park bathroom’s nice. When we woke the next morning, one of the most magical things (in a time of many magical things) had occurred. Every single task was claimed. Stephanie’s younger brother—who we’re fairly certain did nothing to secure the rentals for his own wedding—made countless calls to help with ours. Friends who could not even attend were helping from afar.
We could go on: the army of people who descended on the park the morning of the wedding to decorate; our amazing aunts who created boutonnières from San Francisco Flower Mart flowers (part of the plan all along—and using APW as a reference); the unbelievable skits and songs that our friends and family performed for us the night before our wedding as we ate s’mores at an Indian-themed variety show; the bridesmaid crouched under the table painting Stephanie’s toenails as her cousin did her makeup; Praj’s barely-English-speaking uncle from India who happily cleaned bird poop off picnic benches.
We could write another APW post (or three) on the Indian-American mountain chic wedding we planned to have. We could also write about everything that goes into a nine day wedding. But for us, the real story is how our community came together to give us the greatest gift of all, presenting us with a sign of solidarity and love and creating a memory we will cherish forever.
As we look back on our wedding, we have a very hard time remembering what we envisioned Version One to be like, because that was not, in the end, our wedding. Our wedding was Version Two.
