POONAM & BHARADWAJ = North Indian Garba meets South
Indian flair

 

We love couples who work together to make their wedding dream come alive.  Bharat and Poonam had a huge reception and garba back in March. With the help and masterful planning and coordination of RSVP Special Events, it all became a reality.  Below is  the story in Bharat and Poonam’s words.

“A girl’s second biggest decision usually comes after her boyfriend utters the magic words: “Will you marry me?” – “How do we pull this wedding & reception off together & have everyone happy?” After putting together a wonderful, yet exhausting, wedding ceremony in Gujarat, India, we decided that our reception in Phoenix had to be less strenuous affair and we wanted to find a crew that will bring our dream event to life.

Enter RSVP Special Events’ Narender & Rosy:  A sweet couple bubbling with life & able to exactly perceive our complicated yet artful thoughts about our reception, having created many fabulous events in the past.  The first meeting happened with Poonam & my mother-in-law & they immediately found a connection with RSVP.   Poonam found that she connected extremely well with Rosy and Narender and the concept of being able to be a “guest” at your own wedding reception greatly appealed to Poonam and her mother. After I got to meet Narender & Rosy for the first time, I was impressed & they were able to envision our thinking & our theme: “An ocean theme with an elegant flair” – a theme that wanted to make people feel that they were on a vacation near the ocean, because that is exactly where we wanted to be!

Now to assemble the venue & crew.  First & foremost was venue: When we first visited Chapparal Suites, we fell in love with the place… the beautiful outdoor setting, wonderful landscaping, those little ponds on rocks, flowers everywhere & an amazing bakery chef… it was almost picture perfect. Being central to the city and being able to accommodate 500 guests, it was a perfect setting to have our wonderful event.

Then the next important people were the camera crew!  Being a hobby photographer myself & having the experience in capturing some images for years, we wanted to find the ideal team who would capture images that incorporated “fun & emotions”.  When we first met Lilet & Glenn from LightRain Images, we were welcomed warmly & we started talking to them as though we were longtime friends catching up after a while.  We felt at home in their house & saw all the wonderful photos they captured in the past.  When we browsed through their albums from previous events, the pictures looked stunning especially in metallic print, which gave the photos depth, brilliance in color & the very essence of glamour that we NEEEDED! I still remember driving back, us looking at each other & saying “Poonam, I think we’ve found our photo people!!” The pictures from the garba & reception taken by LightRain Images speak for themselves & totally brought our events to life.

Then came our food, which was what most people are eager to taste & the choice was all Poonam’s – she handpicked Rasraj from Los Angeles, her favorite restaurant from all over the west coast. And after chopping & changing the menus a lot, the food at the event was absolutely nothing short of spectacular.

And one of the last important items was deciding on something that was going to make my father-in-law very happy: the videographers.  Picking Dhiraj & Preeti from Motion8Films was a unanimous choice as they came highly recommended by RSVP. When we met them initially, we were a little unsure since they were just starting off on Motion8 Films but we decided to go ahead with them after meeting them in person & them making us comfortable. They were very professional in their work & the videos they shot were absolutely amazing.

During the last week of the event, we met with Narender & Rosy just once & they took care of everything from start to finish.  (Honestly, I don’t quite remember doing much of anything, other than eating and dancing!)

When we arrived at the garba hall, we were amazed at the colors & décor. Our theme was “Celebration at an Indian village” since one of the best feels of a festival occur in close, cordial, homely communities with very vibrant and ethnic colors!  The food carts, elephants centerpieces, colorful garba sticks the stage, lighting, the magician, the caricature artist… it was picture perfect. We had an amazing celebration that night & after we looked at the pictures captured by Glenn, we were like “was our party this good??!!”  Glenn brought the event to life with his gorgeous pictures, capturing all the colors & designs from the garba.

 

 

The reception was a different affair:  we wanted it to be an elegant event where fun met high class vacationing.  When we first walked in to the room filled with sea shells, sand, blue, purple & the backdrop, we went “Wow!!!!!” Everything we saw was better than we imagined!

We had a lovely pre-event photo session with close members of the family & the pictures captured will be treasured for a long time. Followed by an amazing cocktail hour with chocolate fondue as one of our appetizers!   The reception was a huge hit, the spectacular grand-entries was one of the many highlights. The dance performances, the food, the décor, the music, the party – all made this one of the most unforgettable events for us.  To top it all off, we sent each of our guests a picture of themselves that Glenn and Lilet had captured during the event, with a short message expressing our gratitude. The pictures were amazing and many of our guests have told us that getting the opportunity to see their own PROFESSIONAL picture and read our thoughts has given this event a great lingering feeling!

 

Words can’t express our gratitude to all who made this event. Thank you RSVP Special Events’ Narender & Rosy, LightRain Images’s Glenn & Lilet, Motion8Films’ Dhiraj & Preeti, DJ Isaac, Rasraj & all the folks who worked tirelessly to put this event together. You’ve given us the dream event we always wanted!” ~ Bharat & Poonam

Thank you Poonam, Bharat , Rosy and Narender for choosing us to capture your most precious memories to date!  Glenn and I had such a blast photographing your beautiful garba and reception.  As you can see below, we loved the sweet desserts;-)  Rosy caught us red-handed and took a snap of us, haha!

THANK YOU STOPPING BY!  Till next time:) ~ Lilet & Glenn |  LightRain Images  8.16.2012