Meet Aneesha and Louis :
Aneesha lives in California and Louis in Australia. Aneesha is a Certified Public Accountant and Louis is an Engineer. They were in a long-distance relationship and this didn’t affect their beautiful bond. After having 7 years of relationship, they finally decided to get married. Take a look at their beautiful story!
How They Met :
In the words of Aneesha, We met almost 7 years ago (2013) when I came to Perth, Western Australia for an overseas exchange program. At the end of the year, I moved back to Singapore (where I lived from 2008-2013) while Louis continued living in Australia. In 2014, my family moved to California and we continued the long distance.
The Proposal :
After 6 years of long-distance, Louis proposed to me in Tuscany, Italy on my 25th birthday. He had hired a 4 storeyed castle in Tuscany for my birthday and proposed to me with a ring that he had designed himself.
Wedding Planning :
We had a destination wedding on his family farm in Western Australia. As we come from different cultural and religious backgrounds – I am Maharashtrian and he is Australian, we had two weddings – a Maharashtrian one in the morning and a civil ceremony in the evening. We wanted our wedding to be a small, intimate one. Louis and I paid for the wedding ourselves and a small wedding meant we could have our closest people with us and we could splurge on the aspects of the wedding that were important to us – the feel and the food.
We also wanted the wedding to be in a place that meant something to us – we didn’t want the wedding to be in a random wedding venue that we will never see again – that’s why we chose Louis’ family farm. Louis grew up there and we wanted a place where our kids could come back to every summer and we could set up a picnic in the exact spot where we got married, year after year. The Indian wedding was at the olive groves (Louis’ family makes extra virgin olive oil), while the civil ceremony was in the pine forest section of the farm.
We hand made program booklets to explain to our Non-Indian guests the meaning and significance of Indian weddings. As we were on a budget and organizing a wedding from separate continents (Louis was in Australia and I was in California), we chose to not have a wedding planner. Everything was organized by the two of us.
The theme of our wedding was “Bollywood in the Bush” as this was an amalgamation of Indian weddings in the setting of the Australian outback. We used the instahandle #BollywoodInTheBush to share photos.
Mehendi: For my Henna, I designed it with the help of my henna artist to show mine and my husband, Louis Clarke’s love story and long-distance relationship over the last 7 years
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Maharashtrian Wedding: At the Maharashtrian wedding, there is a cloth held between the bride and the groom called the Antarpat in Marathi. I used the shawl that my mother had worn to her wedding 27 years ago as an Antarpat (red and golden cloth in the pictures) at my wedding to get the blessings from their happy marriage to ours.
Civil Ceremony: At the civil ceremony, we had written our own vows to each other and also had our families speak at the wedding where they spoke about our relationship over the last 7 years and also gave us advice for a happy married life.
Vendors:
Henna Artist – The Henna Leaf Perth
Instahandle -hehennaleafperth
Indian Food – Fusion6 in Perth
Instahandle – fusion6_perth
Western Food – Sensations En Ardoss
Photography and Videography – Shadowcast Images
Instahandle – shadowcast_images
Marquee and event hire – The Event Mill
Instahandle – theeventmill
Outfits – Frontier Heritage in Los Angeles, California
Instahandle – frontierheritage
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