An acrobatic New Jersey wedding that lasted for days

My Love Story is far from picture-perfect. It’s quite the opposite, but it’s still far more captivating and inspiring than any other fairytale love story could be. My husband Arijit and I met back in 2018 in Ibiza, Spain when I was in the middle of traveling the world for a year. I had recently experienced a devastating heartbreak while living in Bali and found myself on my own version of an Eat, Pray, Love journey. Eventually, that journey brought me to a holistic wellness retreat in Ibiza where I happened to meet my husband. While he is from London and I am from NJ, a relationship between us seemed pretty far-fetched but we ended up beginning to date a few weeks later while he was visiting NYC. Just a few days into our relationship, Arijit unexpectedly found out he had Stage 4 Cancer. I ended up moving to London that summer while he was undergoing treatments and for the rest of the year we continued to date long-distance, as I would go back and forth to London every few weeks to be by his side as much as possible. By Christmas, we received the best gift ever - Arijit was in remission! We continued our long-distance relationship but began traveling more together as he continued to recover, we were finally finding a sense of normalcy in our relationship.

Three months later, we were propelled into a worldwide pandemic and our relationship hit yet another hurdle as we battled quarantines, lockdowns, and travel bans together. We became engaged during lockdown in London on the balcony of our apartment when nonessential retail was still shut down. Arijit proposed with a beautiful placeholder ring that his mother provided and later we designed a ring with it as our inspiration!

After all that we had been through together as a couple, naturally, we were ready to celebrate - and ready to go BIG! We held a 3-day affair in Northern NJ on my family’s farm estate that I grew up on. We had 225 guests in attendance, from 15 different countries and 14 US States, as well as 60 guests who came from London specifically! We incorporated British, American, and Indian wedding traditions over the course of our multi-day celebration. Each event was hosted on properties in the area that hold great meaning to me and have been in our family for over 100 years.

Our welcome event which was hosted at our family lake house, where I spent summers as a child, featured an arrival by boat, Indian attire, a Hennah artist, and a cigar roller to kick off the party! The main event was held on the main farm property which still has 7 of our families living on it. We used the main barn hill which overlooks the rolling hills of Northern NJ for our ceremony location. This hill is also the same place where my parents got engaged as high school sweethearts!

The cocktail hour followed in the Orchard with a live band, a petting zoo, and games. We incorporated many performances throughout with an extended format to keep our guests entertained over the course of our 10-hour party!

Moving into the main tented reception, we had an aerialist who poured champagne, a main choreographed aerial performance during dinner, and a party set with an LED lyre and electronic violinist suspended from the ceiling later in the evening!

Being that so many guests came from a distance, the following day we hosted a farewell recovery pool party complete with free-flowing prosecco, another epic performance by a contortionist while floating on the pool in a ball, a pizza food truck, and a dunking tank!