February is Wedding Month at PaperCity and throughout the month we’ll be telling stories of notable Texas weddings. Some might involve well-known figures, many won’t. But all will be wedding tales that go beyond the ordinary and perhaps say something about love. And ourselves.
To say this wedding was a vibrant affair is putting it lightly.
Think the traditional Indian wedding, rooted in South Asian cultures, taking place in Galveston’s Bryan Museum. The wedding replete with all the requisite Indian finery and tradition in the midst of a museum which is dedicated to Texas history.
“We chose the Bryan Museum as the perfect place for its history and the venue could accommodate my elaborate Indian Bengali wedding,” Mukherjee tells PaperCity. “The rich architecture embodied old architecture of Calcutta, India.”
The bride and groom met through a dating app and shared their first date at The Original Ninfa’s on Post Oak Boulevard. The date and subsequent courting went very well. Three years later, on a trip together in Banff, Canada, Sassard proposed — in a gondola following a glorious day of hiking in the mountains.
At Sassard’s request the wedding ceremony was full-on Indian tradition, two hours of beautiful rituals including the Barat procession as the groom and the couple’s friends proceeded together to fetch the bride. Of all the special moments in the ceremony, Mukherjee describes her favorite.
“Wearing my veil, walking down the aisle under the canopy held by four men, all like my brothers — Ajay Khurana, Howard Tate, Nick Merchant and Bikram Singh — had me very emotional. Specially considering the journey I have had from a bad arranged marriage to now finding this love.”
The bride’s lehenga (wedding ensemble) was hand embroidered and brought from her hometown of Lucknow, India by her mother. The groom’s ensembles for the wedding and the reception came from Sari Sapne in Houston’s Mahatma Gandhi District. The shop also provided the bridesmaids’ gowns. Standing with the bride were Sneha Merchant, Sippi Khurana, Teresa Reading, Purva Patel, Meka Coxon, Sadaf Choudhry, Pooja Lodhia,and Kanchan Singh. Maid of honor was Toni Tate.
“It was a very traditional wedding,” Mukherjee shares. “But what stood out was to get the entire city from various cultures and all my news media friends under one roof dressed in Indian attire and dancing away to traditional tunes.”
Among them were KHOU Channel 11 meteorologist Chita Craft, KTRK Channel 13 reporter Miya Shay, TV journalist Katherine Whaley, entrepreneur Anna Reger, award winning journalist Rekha Muddaraj and KTRK Channel 13’s Mycah Hatfield.
The bride’s daughter Aryika and the groom’s two children Luella and Felix all fully embracing the Indian traditions made the ceremony even more special for Ruchi Mukherjee and Walter Sassard.
The celebration concluded with a festive reception and dinner, the music and food all authentic Indian of course.
The happy couple honeymooned in St. Lucia.
