As a couple who works in the visual arts industry, Selena Randhawa (a marketing manager at Disney+) and Jagdeep Pannu (a wedding and commercial cinematographer) were no strangers to all the ingredients—romance, laughter, conflict, tragedy, passion and drama—that go into making a love story for the ages. But little did they imagine that their own path to a ‘happily ever after’ would be fraught with one too many plot twists as well.
The Vancouver-based couple started dating a few months after being introduced by mutual friends two years ago. As the relationship grew stronger, Randhawa wanted her beau to meet her father, who was battling cancer. “Just an hour after they first met in the hospital, my dad passed away,” recalls Randhawa. “And Jay became my light in a very dark world.”
Pannu proposed a few months down the line, and as the couple found a reason to celebrate, they were struck with another tragedy: The unexpected passing of Pannu’s father. “These losses tested our relationship. Losing two parents in the span of nine months, and meeting each other’s extended families for the first time at our fathers’ funerals was not how we expected our relationship to pan out,” says the bride. “But we learned to love through grief and find each other through chaos. It made us appreciate life,” adds the groom, who is the founder of Emerald Films.
The wedding was their light at the end of the tunnel, the rainbow after a torrential downpour. As they resumed its planning, they were keen to marry in India, but their perspective had altered. “We didn’t want to get lost in our own wedding. Instead, we wanted to fully and completely be ourselves with the people who understood us the most,” explains Randhawa. And therein, they took the decision to only have their immediate family in attendance, turning the celebrations into an intimate party of eight.
They worked with Wealhouse Co. to plan the two-day nuptials at luxury resort Amanbagh near Jaipur. The festivities started with a barbeque-themed welcome dinner, followed by the Anand Karaj on the lawns by the pool pavilion the next day, and a Rajasthani thali sit-down reception on one of the property’s terraces. “As Punjabis, a lot of us were having a traditional Rajasthani thali for the first time, and this made the evening even more memorable,” recalls the bride. She had a specific vision of using grapes as the main highlight of the tablescape for this dinner, inspired by a Jacquemus dinner she had seen on Instagram. But the overall memo for the wedding was clean, minimal and pared-back. “Instead of an overload of florals and artificial structures, we wanted each event to be centred around the natural surroundings we were in,” adds the bride.
