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Sid and Jessica – Punta Cana, Dominican Republic

Jessica and Sid, both live in Toronto, Canada. School is where they met for the first time. But it was only after 10 years, when they accidently bumped into each did they lose their hearts to each other and later decided to be together forever. They sealed their promises at Bahia Principe Punta Cana in Dominican Republic.

About the Couple
I work as a Tax Accountant and my husband is in Equity Sales. We live in Toronto. Although we were not high school sweethearts this is where we first met. We became a couple almost 10 years later, when we bumped into each other coming off the train after work. It was truly fate!

Wedding Planning

Sid and I both come from traditional Indian families where the norm is to have a large extravagant wedding with an endless guest list. Shortly after dating, Sid and I discovered to our surprise that neither of us envisioned this for our big day. At first we casually discussed having a destination wedding but after some time we realized we could be the first ones in our family to break that boundary. However, planning a perfect traditional Hindu wedding hundreds of miles away presented itself with many challenges. You can’t have a Hindu wedding without a Pundit and how would we find one from another country? Luckily a friend told us about Pundit Sharma from our home city. He was perfect and was willing to fly down to perform our wedding!

The Garden Gazebo@ Bahia Principe Punta Cana 

We wanted our wedding to be held at a large five star resort in the Caribbean which had a great reputation, was kid friendly and served great food; all of which would still be affordable for our family and friends to attend. After months of discussions with our wedding planner, Luxe Destination Weddings, we finally decided on the Bahia Principe Punta Cana in the Dominican Republic. What stole our hearts about this resort was the beautiful garden gazebo which would serve as our mandap and the fantastic and luxurious gourmet restaurant where we would hold our private wedding reception.

Our Wedding Day

We all arrived at the resort on January 7th for the Wedding which was on January 9th, 2010. Our family and friends were able to bond over a welcome dinner held on the first night and spent a lot of time at the beach and bars together! The first two days at the resort were cloudy with showers but to our luck we woke up on January 9th to bright and clear sunny skies, and knew the day would be a success!

Wedding Colors

Our wedding colours were a traditional gold and red. I bought a modern gold lengha from Dinesh Ramsay who is designer in Toronto. We bought gold chair sashes from home as well as red rose petals for the white aisle runner and fancy wedding programs which we made at home! The resort provided multicoloured flowers bouquets for the mandap and along the walkway which helped to infuse a tropical theme.

Pundit Sharma 

Pundit Sharma performed our wedding and we couldnt have been happier. He went out of his way to ensure we had all the necessary items for our wedding and he made the 1.5 hour ceremony feel like 15 minutes. Our guests were very pleased with his English translations of the ceremony and learned quite a bit that day!

Michael Steingard

After our beautiful wedding we had light refreshments and took pictures with our guests and our bridal party. Our photographer was Michael Steingard from Toronto, who travels to Punta Cana frequently to take wedding pictures. This was truly one of the best decisions we made for our big day, he was creative, kind and very professional as you can see from our stunning and unique photographs!

Wedding Reception

Our wedding reception was held that evening in an indoor gourmet restaurant. We held a private reception and decorated the room simply with white, silver and purple to match my lengha. The food was great and we made sure to have a few speeches, performances, and tons of drinking and dancing! Before leaving for the Dominican we had a D.J. record music for our wedding reception and it was a perfect idea, our guests had a blast and danced the night away!

Best Decision- Destination Wedding

The next day the party and fun continued, and it didnt stop until four days later when our trip was over! We are so incredibly happy that we made this leap because our families and friends rave about the wedding and it definitely brought everyone closer.

Photographs Courtesy:
Michael Steingard Photography, Toronto 
michaelsteingard.com.

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