The excitement and heartfelt gratitude for finally being able to get married is what stood out to me the most from Miren & Michelle’s wedding. Unlike the typical Hindu wedding celebration, Miren and Michelle were on a mission to do theirs in one day. It was a long day packed with such a broad range of emotions, from stillness and anticipation to uncontrollable excitement and tears.

I had my first introduction to Miren and Michelle at the Eaton Centre, which I discovered soon after was their stumping grounds in their university days. As you may have heard in the film, they met at work, but later found out that they had Ryerson University in common. And there began the pursuit.

​They explained to me that they would be doing a Hindu wedding and Reception, which we have experience with, but it was all going to be in one day. To accommodate all the parts and traditions of the event, we’d be doing about 16 hours of coverage, which is a rough stretch. But later we would experience the hospitality, helpfulness and light-heartedness of their families that would help us get through the day with relative ease.
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Notables

The baraat, the welcoming and blessing of the groom, was the most fun one we’ve done! The fact that I was coaxed into dancing may or may not be attributed to this option 😅.

​After the ceremony, we rushed back to the house of the groom’s parents to document a couple of their traditions. Bringing the bride back to his parents’ house to welcome her home as a part of the family is a practice in a few different cultures and we’ve captured this before. However, this time there was an added component of the bride stepping into a bowl of dye and then stepping onto a cloth. This action essentially immortalizes her first steps into the house as Miren’s wife.

Once Michelle crossed the threshold, Miren and Michelle faced off in a game that would essentially determine who would run the household. A ring was dropped into a milky liquid (some of the family joked that it was milkshake but I didn’t taste it!) and the couple plunged in with one hand to retrieve it before the other. They did a best of seven series but I won’t tell you who won!

We ended our night to the familiar sound of a Tassa band as we started wrapping up our coverage. It was a long day and a long year, but dang, we grew a lot and had fun doing it.

​As we narrate together.