They Spent 8.5 Years Long-Distance. Then They Married at the Home Her Father Built for His Daughters

Sukhie and Harvir were 7,300 miles apart when their story began.

It was the summer of 2014. Sukhie was 14, living in New York, when she saw a photo of Harvir, who lived in Ludhiana, Punjab, through a friend. “I thought he was cute,” she remembers, so she messaged him on Facebook.

“We hit it off right away,” Sukhie says. “We were just two googly-eyed kids, flirting, and one thing led to another. Harvir asked me to be his girlfriend, and I said yes without thinking.”

December 24, 2014, made it official.

Long distance at that age meant learning how to make a relationship fit around school, sleep schedules and an ocean between them. Harvir would stay awake late to speak to Sukhie, while she planned her breaks around the hours he would be awake in India. “The biggest challenge at first was just being kids,” she says. “Then it was balancing school, then work.”

There were times Sukhie questioned whether the distance was too much. Harvir rarely did. “I hated long distance and would often complain that I couldn’t do it, but Harvir stayed strong. He always said it would work out.”

Eventually, the distance became normal. By 2018, the relationship no longer felt like something they were simply trying to maintain across two countries. They were talking seriously about a future together. Harvir had already told his parents about Sukhie, and when she finally told hers, her dad travelled to India to meet him. “He loved him immediately and I was so relieved.”

What Sukhie loves most about Harvir is the calm he brings into their relationship, usually with a joke somewhere in the middle. “Harvir is the funniest person I know,” she says.

“When I get upset, he doesn’t argue or ignore me, he just cracks a joke, something so ridiculous that I forget why I was mad in the first place.”

For Harvir, Sukhie became a source of comfort in an especially meaningful way after his father passed away in 2020. His family often tells him that Sukhie reminds them of his dad by nature. Harvir puts it simply: “If you take Sukhie out and put my dad in, or vice versa, it’s the same for me.”

After 8.5 years together, Harvir enlisted Sukhie’s sister, Armin, to help plan the proposal. He knew Sukhie loved Bali, so that became the destination. She suspected something might be happening, but Harvir still managed to make the moment his own and, true to form, even cracked a joke during the proposal.

Then came the wedding, although Sukhie admits she had been imagining it long before there was a ring. “We planned the wedding for a year, but truthfully, I’d been planning it in my head since the very beginning.”

The location was especially personal. Sukhie’s father had built their family home in Punjab with the hope that one day his daughters would get married there. Years later, Sukhie and Harvir did exactly that.

Planning together also became one of their first real lessons in compromise. “Harvir and I don’t always share the same opinions, and planning a wedding together really tested our ability to compromise (which, let me tell you, we’ve now mastered!).” The guest list was another story. “Cutting it down was like solving a puzzle with way too many pieces especially with our parents wanting to invite everyone they’ve ever known.”

Some of Sukhie’s favourite memories happened before the wedding week even began, during trips to India with Harvir. “Trying on outfits, wandering through the markets, and sharing those little ‘this is really happening’ moments with him made all the stress and sleepless nights worth it.”

The Looks

When the wedding finally arrived, Sukhie was more emotional than she expected. “I cried at everything,” she admits. The moment that stayed with her most came during the Anand Karaj. “When we finished the fourth one, we realized that we had actually gotten married, and I just had little explosions in my heart.”

The people behind the scenes mattered too. Sukhie credits Manpreet of Gogi Studio for bringing a calm presence while documenting the week, Baeghamkot for bringing their ideas to life, and Noor of WooNoori Creations for capturing the smaller moments happening between events.

Maiyan

←→

Mehndi

←→

Choora

←→

Jago

←→

Wedding

←→

Reception

←→

After nearly a decade of making a relationship work across countries, wedding planning gave Sukhie and Harvir one more reminder that they were always on the same team.

“If there’s one thing we’d tell couples planning their wedding, it’s this: Don’t forget what this is really about, you two.”

“For us, the best memories were made when we stopped worrying about everything being perfect and just lived in the moment. Laugh, dance, and soak it all in because the day will fly by faster than you can imagine.”

For Sukhie and Harvir, getting to that day took almost nine years, countless late-night calls, carefully timed breaks and thousands of miles between them.

Then they finally got to celebrate in the home her father had built hoping for exactly this day.