Despite having met as college students in Los Angeles and currently living in New York City, Mitali Gupta and Nick Ruzicka have always known they’d get married in India. Mitali grew up in Delhi, and always assumed she’d return to her native country for her wedding one day. For Nick, who is half-Indian and grew up in the Bay Area, it was a bit more complicated: his mother left the country at age 17 and his exposure to the culture was limited to less frequent visits to his grandfather.
The decision to hold their nuptials abroad, then, was not about reconnecting with heritage, per se. “It was about the joining of two families and a symbol of us going on an adventure, together, with everyone else,” Nick says. “The warmth you feel joining an Indian family is unparalleled to any culture.” Here, the couple share how they settled on a region of the subcontinent, embraced local vendors, and bridged cultural gaps over multiple events.
Choose a city based on your vibe
Mitali’s family is still based in Delhi, but the couple weren’t entirely sure where in India they wanted to hold the wedding. Indeed, the capital provided some logistical ease, but they also considered other major cities in the north before landing on Goa. “We’d been to a lot of weddings in Jaipur and Udaipur, and it was kind of cold. It also gets a little bit more stressful over there,” the bride explains.
Goa was a place that held warm memories for Nick, who had visited the state as a child, and it seemed like it would set a significantly more relaxed tone for their celebration. “We wanted our guests to feel like they were on a vacation. India can be a lot to handle for westerners unused to it,” he explains. Proximity to the beach would make it feel like a getaway—even for the Indian guests.
Have one event closer to home to appease some guests
Holding the wedding hundreds of miles from Delhi also allowed the couple to avoid the traditionally massive Indian wedding. Instead, their guest list clocked in between 120 and 150. “We wanted something a bit more intimate. We’re both very intentional people, and we wanted a chance to talk to everyone,” Mitali says. “We actually would’ve liked it to be under a hundred, but this was a good compromise with our parents, and we got to spend time with a lot of people this way.”
That said, the couple decided to host the sangeet, a night of song and dance performances, in Delhi before the rest of the celebration, which served two purposes. “We wanted that energy at the beginning,” says Mitali, “so we had a much larger sangeet with 250 people in Delhi for the people that either didn’t get invited to the more intimate wedding, or for people who couldn’t make it [to Goa].”
Take the time to visit venues in-person
Since the couple was hoping to host all of their wedding events—not to mention house their guests—on the same property, it was crucial they find just the right place. They opted to work with a travel agent at this stage, rather than a wedding planner, and took two trips to check out several resorts. “[The region] is divided into north and south: The north is the younger, partying spot, whereas the south is considered more of the luxurious, romantic area,” says Mitali. “The W was a strong contender, but it was in the north and had more of an upbeat vibe, and we wanted a romantic destination.”
