Anjna & Shannon

November 30, 2022

1.34k

LAS VEGAS, USA

We have been together since July 2018 and got engaged in October 2020 in a preplanned surprise pandemic double proposal. After spending much of 2021 making career leaps and driving across the country to move from Brooklyn, NY, to Oakland, CA, the time came to start planning our wedding.

As extroverted maximalists with a love for all things eccentric, edgy and extravagant, we knew we wanted to have a big fantastical wedding with our family and friends that brought together South Indian and Black American traditions with our love for thrifting, color, and movies. However, between the pandemic, our mental health, and the onset of Anjna’s disability, we realized that it was going to be overwhelming to get legally married in front of a huge crowd. We are people pleasers and while we absolutely ADORE our family and friends, we knew that we would miss being able to celebrate on our own. So, we decided to elope for our legal marriage in June 2022 and call the larger wedding in May 2023 our “community wedding,” where we will share our love and celebrate with our communities.

For the elopement, we decided to get married in the famous pink Cadillac in the Tunnel of Love at A Little White Wedding Chapel in Las Vegas. For months, we searched and searched for outfits that could commemorate the event–something extra and a little sexy since we were doing this alone and in Vegas style. Finally, in the weeks before the elopement, we popped over to the Haight Ashbury district in San Francisco, which is full of wild and wonderful fashions. We pieced together our outfits from Piedmont Boutique and Toxic Thrillz, both of which had the perfect campy and costumey petticoats, bustiers, veils, top hats, and other accessories to DIY our outfits together. This was definitely a process of realizing that while we will have trouble finding exact inspiration for our small and big celebrations, we will likely end up inspiring others with our uniquely queer and non-traditional ideas.

We LOVE modeling and taking pictures, and much of our relationship grew around dressing up in matching outfits and strutting about town, so we coordinated with our incredible photographer Hannah Datwyler and a limo company to drive us all around town for what we called “a photoshoot that starts with an elopement.” We were the 7th couple that Hannah officially witnessed at A Little White Chapel, and it was the best way for her to close out her time in Vegas before her move to Spokane, Washington, where she’s currently taking photography clients! We are absolutely thrilled with how she captured the dynamism, dreaminess and downright disco vibes of our elopement and desert photoshoot!

We highly recommend a quick elopement to anyone who is dealing with similar anxieties, whether they are about social awkwardness or social distancing. We are MARRIED!!! And now we have a strong foundation upon which to plan our forthcoming Vintage Bollywood Dreamscape-themed wedding.