Inside the Wedding That Inspired Savy to Become a Wedding Planner

Savy and Puneet met on a last-minute long weekend trip to Kelowna with friends. Neither of them had gone expecting anything to come from it, but Savy remembers noticing him almost immediately. “I wasn't really looking to meet anyone that night, but for some reason as soon as I locked eyes with Puneet, I just couldn't look away.”

They caught each other looking a few times before Puneet finally came over to talk. “And after that, we just couldn't stop talking,” Savy says. Somewhere in those first conversations, they realized how similarly they thought about family, something that mattered deeply to both of them. “My crush on him got even deeper as soon as I learnt that we have similar values.”

When the trip ended, the connection didn’t. Back home in Surrey, they kept texting, started going on dates and quickly became inseparable. “Once we began texting and going on dates, we fell for each other,” Savy says. “It was as if we had known each other for years! The way we instantly understood each other, and wanted to spend endless hours with each other was something neither of us had felt before.”

“Within almost a month of our relationship, we knew we would end up married in the near future,”

And Puneet was apparently listening when Savy kept pointing out how beautiful a Banff proposal would be.

During a couples’ trip to Calgary for the Rodeo, the group spent a day in Banff. Savy was busy taking photos of everyone else when Puneet kept asking her to come closer to the water. She didn’t think much of it until he got down on one knee.

“I was not expecting him to propose to me at that moment and tears of joy instantly started pouring as he told me how much he loved me and wanted to spend the rest of him life with me,” she recalls. “That was to this day, one of the most beautiful and memorable moments of my life!”

Savy started planning the wedding two years in advance, with things picking up around the one-year mark. There were vendors to book, shopping trips to India and, because dancing is such a big part of her life, five separate performances to choreograph with family and friends.

She enjoyed the process enough that she and her sister eventually started Beautiful Beginnings. “I enjoyed planning my wedding to the T so much that I wanted to help other brides do the same,” she says.

The wedding week had no shortage of favourite moments: a boliyan competition between her nanke and dadke, Puneet crashing her Jago, an emotional Chooda ceremony, a sunrise first look and a surprise Bollywood performance at the reception where Savy’s sister appeared dressed as Puneet.

For the wedding day, Savy wore a Marwar Couture lehenga in olive green and rust tones with jewellery from Purab Paschim. Puneet’s pastel green achkan was designed to complement hers, right down to embroidery Savy hand-drew herself. “Both our colors ended up matching perfectly and the wedding looks turned out better than we could have even imagined!”

After two years of planning, Savy’s advice is less about the details and more about keeping perspective. “Never get trapped in the whole concept of the 'wedding'. Focus on the 'marriage' that is to follow. The rest doesn't matter as much as that promise and lifelong commitment you will be making with your partner.”