Weddings, Indian Style

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In a ballroom at the Hilton Hotel in Pearl River, N.Y., four small women wearing black suits were carrying large tote bags and talking quietly into headsets. “We have another five minutes; they’re going to do the throwing of the rice,” one of them said into her mothpiece, as though it were a military directive.

She was speaking to her team and her boss, Sonal Shah. Ms. Shah, the most animated of the women, is owner of Sonal J. Shah Event Consultants, one of the premier Indian wedding planning services in New York. Ms. Shah believes there is no room for error on this day, considered one of the most important in Indian culture, uniting not only a couple but also two families. The timelines her company uses for events are rigorous minute-by-minute accounts: The ceremony can last up to four hours and involve not just rice, but also fruit, fire and Sanskrit chanting. Horses can be called for. The Pearl River schedule was 10 pages long.

Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times Sonal Shah and a staff member, of Sonal J. Shah Event Consult! ants, inspected Safal Durg’s dress before the wedding.

Ms. Shah, 36, started her company eight years ago. It now organizes more than 25 weddings a year. Families can spend hundreds of thousands of dollars. She was inspired to start her company after her own wedding, when she realized her planners didn’t know how to throw an Indian wedding. “She was more intrigued by the whole thing than in control,” she said of her planner. “She was so awestruck. I was like, ‘You need to get a grip.’ ”

Before the ceremony, the bride and groom enjoyed a few moments of calm in a private room. Josh Laurito, who is Jewish, not Hindu, sat in traditional garb while nervously shaking his foot. When his soon-to-be wife, Shruti Raju, was asked why she thought Indian weddings involved so much activity and detail, she replied that they are one of the biggest events for an Indian family. “Why would anybody hold anything back” she asked.

Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times The ceremony may have concluded, but there were still wedding pictures to be taken.

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