The first gift Jay Gandhi ever gave Himani Patel was an empty scrapbook. Each year, he would present her with a blank one, and each year, she returned it filled with stories, photographs, and memories. Together, they dreamed of growing old surrounded by shelves of scrapbooks, love preserved in paper. That tradition became the foundation for their wedding.
Their story began during college, when Himani instinctively grabbed Jay’s hand during a chaotic street fight outside a fraternity party. She teased him about his name, “Gandhi, like Mahatma Gandhi?” and lectured him on non-violence. The next day, Jay found her on Facebook to thank her and ask her out. From that wild night, they grew from best friends to life partners.
When planning their wedding, Himani and Jay chose storytelling as the heart of their theme. Their “Storybook Sangeet” invited guests to walk through a giant book, read original poems, and flip through the couple’s scrapbooks, each one a chapter of their journey.
On June 14, already their anniversary and proposal date, they wed surrounded by family and friends. Himani surprised Jay with life-size polaroids of every June 14 they had shared, carried down the aisle by his groomsmen. For the ceremony, she wore a pearl-encrusted white lehenga with a delicate veil, clean, elegant, and refreshingly different from the heavy red looks of most brides. Their vows emphasized equality: they split the pheras evenly and rejected customs like Kanyadaan, choosing instead to symbolize marriage as expanding family, not leaving one.
Their wedding was not just an event – it was their love story, told page by page.
