Architect Anamika Goyal and textile designer Jean Mason tied the knot in a beautiful garden ceremony near the Pacific Ocean. They met on a dating app in 2014 that Anamika describes as “the happiest accident” in her life.

The couple described their 9-person intimate wedding as an achievement of both their creative visions. The ceremony was only half a day long but it was full of handcrafted personal details that their friends and family put together.

This includes the saree that Anamika wore. It was worn by her mother originally at her own wedding.

“In my opinion, it’s better to approach these things as a long-term ongoing conversation rather than a single moment. Because in reality, it will be a slow process for parents or family members to fully understand what it means to have an LGBTQ+ kid amongst them. We are grateful every day that we chose to be our authentic selves and build the lives that we knew would make us happy. It was also challenging for us not to have many gay role models in our lives, and the few we did have were either distant acquaintances or didn’t have the life we wanted to create for ourselves. These days, both of us are very close with our families and our in-laws.” says Anamika in an interview given to WeddingSutra when asked about what advice she would like to give young queer folks.

In the context of LGBTQ+ weddings, it’s also important to remember that the right to get married is by no means an end goal for queer rights movement anywhere.

Several queer rights activists have recognised that marriage is inherently exclusionary of a lot of queer identities and as an institution it’ll never be entirely accommodative of all of our queer aspirations.