The pheras were very special moments, says Bollywood actress Sonnalli Seygall

Sonnalli: Ashesh and I met some 11 years ago socially, thanks to my best friend Simran. We then kept bumping into each other over the course of time at parties and gatherings, at common friends’ birthdays, etc.

It did not take long for us to realise we wanted to marry each other. The only thing we were not sure of was the time and where, and how. It took us some time to come to the same page about marriage and about when. I also think we got a bit too comfortable, and then our families were like, ‘You know what, why don’t you two just seal the deal?’. So that’s how we decided last year that we would get married in 2023. The final decision we took about three weeks before the actual wedding date.

But then that’s always the case with him.

Ashesh is one of the kindest, pure-hearted, morally-correct, well-mannered persons I’ve ever met. He is one of those really beautiful, old school souls who is extremely rare to find in today’s day and age. To him, family is everything. He’s special. Yeah, he’s truly special.

Our vision for our wedding was pretty simple. We wanted everything to be meaningful and everything to be dignified. The purpose was to have a beautiful marriage, rather than a beautiful wedding. And when the focus is on that, on just making memorable moments, the byproduct is that it became a beautiful wedding as well.

From the start, we were very sure that we wanted to do it at the Gurdwara.

As for the colour themes, we didn’t really have time to think but it just kind of fell into place. It was more about ‘go with the flow’.

Ashesh and I are the kind of people who are very much ‘go with the flow’ people. We don’t believe in stressing over small or big things. One thing we were sure of was to have fun at our wedding. We did not want to be one of those couples who are stressed out in order to make only the others have a good time.

I feel the whole point is that we should remember this moment. We should have a good time and everyone should have fun and everyone should be happy for us. So that’s what the focus was on. We had maybe three or four simple functions and we invited only some very, very close people.

We were sure of who we wanted around us and everything kind of fell into place.

I was keen to ensure that every function of ours had a meaning. So the mehendi took place at Ashesh’s hotel. We wanted one of the functions to be conducted at the hotel. Incidentally, his brother too had a marriage function at the hotel so it was like a family ritual of sorts, you know, to kick off the functions from their hotel.

The mehendi was held there which was the first of our functions and we then had a wedding at the Gurdwara. The reception was at Gallops which again is a place that is special to us because it was the first place that Ashesh interned at after he returned from Switzerland after his catering course. Gallops is owned by one of our closest friends, rather family I would say. It was quite literally like having a function at our brother’s restaurant so there was a lot of emotional value there.

As for the clothes, I knew I wanted to wear Manish Malhotra and for mehendi I did Abhinav Mishra. Interestingly, for the mehendi, Ashesh’s and my clothes matched exactly although it was not intentional.

For the wedding and reception we were doing the [attire selection] together and I was very much involved. But for mehendi I told him ‘you decide what you would like to wear and I’ll choose mine’.

I had decided I’d be doing Abhinav and he did not know which colour it was. It just so happened that when we finalised outfits we realised that our colours were so similar. I was like see this is how the universe works.

For the wedding I picked my outfit, and I love the colour pink. I wanted something in pink because it is the colour of the heart chakra and I wanted to have that around me.

I love saris, but I wasn’t sure if I wanted to do sari on the reception or the wedding day. And when I saw what Manish was like I decided it would be a sari. It was even more special because it had our wedding date embroidered at the end of the trail- 7/6/23 - and and our initials as well. So it was very, very special. He was wearing a classic Kunal Rawal. For the reception Ashesh was very sure that he wanted to wear a black bandgala and I think he totally killed it. Mine was again a Manish outfit.

We did everything possible to make the wedding memorable- for us and for others. We’re so glad that all our friends who don’t live in the country flew down at such a short notice.

The ceremonies were simple and very traditional. We had our haldi functions separately at our respective houses- just as how it was traditionally done.

My haldi was very private at my house in typical Punjabi style and his was a very Sindi celebration at his house where they put mustard oil on them and tear their kurtas.

One of the most special things that Ashesh did was asking for my hand the typical traditional way. We both are not big fans of the proposal where the man goes down on one knee, etc.

When it came to exchanging rings he literally stole me from the hotel room saying ‘come for half an hour’. Then he took me to his home which is our home now. He took me to the garden where we exchanged rings. He said ‘in this whole madness of putting the wedding together, we’re not getting any time to ourselves. So this is our time. Let’s just take this half an hour. Last time as girlfriend boyfriend’. And yeah, that’s how we exchanged rings. That was a very, very, special moment as well which nobody else was part of- just him and me and our househelp.

As for my jewellery I wanted something that was simple and classic. I’m not someone who does a lot and wanted it to be minimalistic. So it was Anmol Jewellers. They did a fabulous job. I love my jewellery. And my kaliras were one of my most favourite part of my whole look because they were by Raabta by Rahul; they did a fabulous job of customising my kaliras at such short notice.

The most memorable moment? Gosh, it’s hard to pick because there’re so many of them. That entire 3 days of festivities were full of so many happy moments. But the most peaceful and special one was when we were taking the pheras; it was very very surreal. It seemed like something very beautiful and very pure. Yeah, pure is the right word. The whole moment felt extremely pure. So I would say that would be our favourite moment when we were taking pheras and every time we would bow down and seek the blessings of Guru Granth Sahib Ji.