- A New Jersey-based couple named Amit Shah and Aditya Madiraju had a traditional Indian wedding celebration in July 2019.
- The celebrations included a Mehendi ceremony, a formal wedding in a Hindu temple, and a Sangeet-style reception with their friends and families.
- The couple went viral after they posted pictures from the wedding, as religious unions between same-sex couples aren’t common in the Hindu community.
- Now, the couple is using their platform to bring visibility to queer relationships and to advocate for other marginalized groups.
- Visit Insider’s homepage for more stories.
A New Jersey-based couple named Amit Shah and Aditya Madiraju got legally married in January 2018.
Shah and Madiraju met in person through a mutual friend in 2016 after being connected online for a while.
“We used to talk sort of online through social media,” Shah told Insider. “Just brief conversations because we appreciated each other’s work and stuff like that, and that kind of turned into an instant conversation when we first met.”
The couple tied the knot in 2018 in a courthouse ceremony. “We knew that being married by the courts was just something that we wanted to do,” Shah said of the 2018 ceremony.
They also adopted a dog in 2018, who they named Adam as a combination of their first names.
But Shah and Madiraju knew they wanted to have a religious celebration in addition to their civil ceremony.
"We knew we wanted the people we love around us," Shah said of the more personal wedding the couple envisioned.
"My parents live in India, so I think we also wanted to celebrate with them when they were visiting us," Madiraju added.
Madiraju's parents visited in July 2019, which is when the couple's wedding celebration took place.
The couple had a three-part wedding celebration, which combined Hindu traditions with their more laid-back personalities.
Shah owns a wedding planning company, which helped the couple figure out what they wanted their celebration to be like.
"Adi and I have planned many people's weddings together, and we've seen sort of the traditional landscape of Indian weddings, which is super fun and days and days long," Shah said. "But we just wanted something a little bit more practical and more suited to our personalities."
"People don't really have fun at their own events, and that's definitely not something that we wanted," he said.
For instance, their celebrations started with a Mehendi ceremony, where the grooms' hands were covered with henna, a tradition typically reserved for brides.
"It's for good luck," Madiraju said of the ceremony. "Basically, how deep the color goes on your hands means your spouse will love you that much."
"Men don't usually get Mehendi, but we wanted to just to break that stereotype," Madiraju told Insider.
About 20 to 30 guests attended the Mehendi ceremony, including Shah and Madiraju's mothers.
Madiraju said seeing his mother, who lives in India, have fun during the celebrations was his favorite part of the wedding.
"We come from a very muted, super cultural and traditional family," he said. "You don't do anything out of the comfort zone."
"But when she was in America - and this was the first trip for my mom and dad - I saw a whole different side. She was trying mimosas and margaritas, and she was wearing all of this designer stuff."
"That was very special for me," he added.
They also had a formal wedding ceremony in a Hindu temple, which is uncommon for same-sex couples.
"In India, being gay was not legal until 2018," Madiraju said, pointing to the India Supreme Court's reversal of a ban that had previously made "same-sex relations" punishable by up to 10 years in jail.
But marriages between same-sex couples still aren't recognized in the country, making the number of religious wedding ceremonies that take place between gay couples in the Hindu faith small.
Shah and Madiraju, however, were able to have a religious ceremony in New Jersey. Around 50 guests attended the celebration.
"We wanted to have the closest people," Shah said of their wedding guests. "We had to cut back on our guest list quite a bit, so that was a tough part of the planning process."
The couple told Insider that they focused on their families more than themselves on their wedding day.
"You know how in traditional weddings, the bride and the groom would be given all of the attention? We literally were running around the town trying to fix the clothes for our sisters-in-law and our mothers," Madiraju told Insider.
"I think that's the really nice thing about Indian weddings that's different from other weddings," Shah said.
"You know, people are at your house every day for like a whole week, helping you out or just getting involved in things."
The final part of their celebration was a Sangeet-style wedding reception that included about 120 of their friends and family members.
Sangeet celebrations often take place in advance of the wedding, but Shah and Madiraju decided to host theirs after.
The couple wanted the Sangeet-style party to be laid-back. They held it at Pondicheri, an Indo-western fusion restaurant.
"Unlike other receptions, which are very formal and organized, we didn't want to get into that because our wedding wasn't a stereotypical wedding," Shah said. "We didn't have a decorator and we didn't have a wedding planner."
"We picked up the flowers from Whole Foods, and we called it a day," Madiraju added.
Shah and Madiraju designed their own outfits for the Sangeet party in order to add a personal touch.
They also designed a lot of the clothes their family members wore throughout the weekend.
The couple's ceremony ensembles were made by Anita Dongre, and their Mehendi outfits were made by Bohame.
The couple posted photos from their wedding to social media, and they quickly went viral.
Shah's original wedding post got over 20,000 likes on Instagram.
"We were getting messages that were like, 'Congratulations on the wedding. You guys have set such a milestone,'" Madiraju told Insider of reactions to the images from people online. "But we didn't want to set a milestone for anything."
"We were just doing a low-key wedding with 40 people, and somehow the nation knew about it. So I think that was overwhelming."
"I think it showed us the power of social media more than anything," Shah added.
Now, Shah and Madiraju use their platform to advocate for other marginalized groups and to encourage same-sex couples to do what's right for them.
When they first went viral, Shah replied to every comment on his Instagram posts. "We didn't want anyone to feel forgotten," Madiraju said.
"We're just happy to be part of this moment," Shah added.
"There are so many couples now that have gotten married after this," Madiraju said of others in their community. "Though we were the only wedding that happened at a religious place," that the couple knows of. "And we just got lucky."
The couple also tries to stress to their followers that it doesn't matter where you get married, as long as you're surrounded by the people who are important to you.
"The most important thing is that even if you do it in your backyard - and a couple of our ceremonies were in our backyard - it doesn't matter as long as you have everyone there," Madiraju said.
"You don't have to go to a temple or a church to get officially wedded. You can do it anywhere," he added.
"We do feel like we have a responsibility," Shah said of their social platforms.
"We want to own that responsibility and do it justice because we did get this much attention and it means something," Shah said.
"It means that more of these stories need to be told, and we want to be part of them. And we want that to be something that we focus on," he added. The couple have launched a YouTube channel since they went viral, where they bring visibility to what a same-sex relationship is like.
"I think the most challenging thing back home in India is for people to picture two guys living together as a couple," Madiraju said. "Because it's a completely alien topic, in India at least. They cannot picture two men married and living as a couple, so they have basic questions, like who does the dishes?" The couple answers these questions in their videos.
Madiraju said the best part of being married is that they "don't have to hide."
"I just feel very normal now. There's no awkwardness, no uneasiness when we talk about stuff," he said.
"The focus can shift from the whole coming out and there being that obstacle, to just our lives and what we actually want to do," Shah added.
"For so many years before we came out, or even before we got married and people knew, the constant struggle before anything else was how are we going to do this? Is this even going to happen?"
"Now that that's out of the way, we can really focus on real life, as weird as that sounds," he said.
You can follow Shah and Madiraju's YouTube channel here.
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