They Met Through a Makeup Artist's Instagram Page, Then Planned Their Wedding Around Her Calendar

Gurinder followed Kamal on Instagram twice before he ever said a word to her. He had first come across her on the page of a makeup artist named Varaich Vanity, and when his follow showed up, Kamal saw it and carried on with her day. “I noticed he followed me and I paid no mind to it,” she says. A few weeks later he followed her again and liked her pictures, and this time she decided to answer in kind. “I played the game back,” she says, and that was all the encouragement he needed to send his first message: “Thanks for the love, haha.”

"Our love story is my favorite," Kamal says.

When Gurinder proposed, he did it in Paris, in front of the Eiffel Tower, during a photo shoot he had planned for the two of them. In the elevator beforehand, Kamal happened to be filming when he started rubbing his pocket. “Which I later realized was the ring,” she says. She did not have to wait long to find out why. “He planned this photo shoot for us and was on his knee asking me to be his wife moments after.”

They spent about a year and a half planning the wedding, and Kamal is quick to point out that she did not carry it alone. “I was extremely blessed that Gurinder was so hands on and was part of the process till the end,” she says. “He took care of a lot of the weight on both ends.” Their biggest challenge was settling on the wedding outfits, and by her own account the time was not shared equally. “Sadly, I gave Gurinder about two days to pick his outfit as I took the entire three weeks up in India while selecting mine,” she admits.

She had her reasons. “My looks were so important to me,” says Kamal, whose main focus was looking unique and who already knew which designer she wanted for the wedding day. “I knew I wanted to wear Marwar Couture for my wedding and when I visited them in New Delhi, I fell in love with my outfit,” she says. “It was filled with intricate detail and was so different from anything I have ever seen.”

Then her family convinced her to look in Punjab, and the outfit she loved stayed behind in Delhi. It was Gurinder and his father who took her back. They made a day trip of it, waking up at 3am to reach Delhi by 10am, and when Kamal tried the lehenga on and walked out, her father-in-law did not need a second look. “This is the one,” he said. Kamal heard more in those words than an opinion on an outfit.

“That moment will be so special to me because in that moment I felt like I was officially a daughter to another family who supported and loved me endlessly,” she says.

“I think being a bride getting married is very different compared to the groom,” Kamal says. “Gurinder had a party for 10 days straight.” On her side, every event was a lot more emotional, and the person she leaned on through all of it was the same one who had brought the two of them together in the first place.

Varaich Vanity, the artist whose page Gurinder first saw her on, did Kamal’s hair and makeup for the entire week, and the couple went as far as choosing their dates around her schedule. “We call her our vacholan since she technically introduced us,” Kamal says. “Our wedding dates were planned around her availability.” Kamal describes her as “my biggest support team,” and it shows in the way she talks about their mornings together. “We curated looks that fit my style and being in her glam chair was my favorite way to start off the days,” she says. On the wedding morning, that care reached her before the artist did. “I will never forget wedding morning before she got there, she told me to wake up and pray. She’s more than an artist, she’s family.”

The wedding was held at Nirvana Estate in Bakersfield, which Kamal remembers as “a beautiful vineyard with pure peace.” “It felt like it was out of a movie,” she says. She wore the Marwar Couture lehenga her father-in-law had chosen without hesitating, and of all her looks that week it is the one everyone seems to agree on. “I would say my wedding look has to be everyone’s and my personal favorite.” The reception followed at Clovis Castle in Clovis, “between mountains during the evening that felt like serenity.”

All of it was photographed and filmed by Brellow, a team Kamal had been watching since long before she had a wedding of her own to plan. “I grew up watching their wedding highlights since a little girl and they were one of my dream vendors,” she says. “They created such a safe space for us and truly felt like family.” Her biggest request was that the highlight video leave everyone in tears, “and they did just that.”

Still, the moment that always comes back to her is the first dance. Prophec was singing their song when Gurinder looked at her, and the man who had once opened with “Thanks for the love, haha” had tears in his eyes. “He was so emotional and filled with so much love,” Kamal says. She looked at him and said,

“We did it, my love.”

For couples who are planning now, Kamal has one instruction before any other. “Have fun! This is the most special time of your life,” she says. “It is no joke when they say it flies by. Remember, there can be so much that doesn’t go your way but it’s out of your control at that point.” Take it as it is, she says, enjoy it, and know that everything is happening the way it is supposed to.

To Kamal and Gurinder, who did it, and to Varaich Vanity, who technically introduced them.