New Yorker couple Nidhi Patel and Rohan Somasundaram may have tied the knot with a dreamy vineyard wedding in Napa Valley surrounded by 300 of their friends and family members, but when they exchanged vows, it was at 2am with a swim. “We decided to have some time to ourselves the night before the official ceremony—just us, no make-up or heavy clothes,” reveals the bride, a strategy consulting manager.
The couple met each other through a common friend back in 2016, and after Somasundaram, a product manager, popped the question with a proposal at medieval castle winery Castello Di Amorosa in Napa Valley last year, the East Coast natives decided to return to California to tie the knot with an extravagant vineyard wedding at Carneros Resort and Spa.
Personalisation may be part of the course at Indian nuptials today, but it’s an aspect Patel took particularly seriously with her vineyard wedding. So, not only did the reception party have napkins with fun facts about the couple printed on them, but they went a step ahead and stocked the bar with ice cubes lasered with a heart and their initials in the middle. The tables that evening were named after the couple’s favourite vineyards and wines as an ode to the destination. “We also had an espresso and gelato truck at the cocktail party since we both love affogato,” adds the groom. The dessert menu included mini chocolate lava cakes, which was their go-to dish at restaurant chain Applebee’s where they first met. Patel even hand-wrote a personal message on the sole of Somasundaram’s shoes for the wedding day.
The three-day celebrations paid ample odes to the bride’s Gujarati heritage and the groom’s Tamilian traditions. The daytime Tamilian wedding ceremony at the property’s hilltop lawn was followed by a South Indian thali lunch served on banana leaves while the sangeet doubled up as a garba party. For the Gujarati wedding ceremony, “Rohan entered the mandap with my parents which I felt was extremely sweet,” reminisces the bride. This celebration of their lineage was not without some fun twists either. So, the welcome drinks at the mehendi, for instance, were named ‘Kem Cho’ (meaning ‘how are you’ in Gujarati) and ‘Vanakkam’ (meaning ‘welcome’ in Tamil). They dedicated two food stations at the sangeet to their grandmothers, christening them ‘Ba’s Bombay Frankie’ and ‘Thati’s Kitchen’.
