This South Carolina Wedding Fused Indian and Western Traditions Through a Kaleidoscope of Colors
In the fall of 2015, Maisha Visram and Manpreet Toor met on campus at Western University in Canada, where they both attended Ivey Business School. “We were one year apart, but all business students spent the majority of their time in the same building,” Manpreet explains. “One day, Maisha ran out of class, and I asked my friend who she was. I found out later she had also seen me in the atrium and asked her friends the same thing. Our friends knew each other and us, but we had never met, which was crazy given we had so many mutual connections.”
Manpreet had a part-time job as a peer advisor and one of their duties was to host a fake networking session where junior year students—which included Maisha’s class—got to role play these real life scenarios that were about to take place on campus in the coming months with recruiting season about to pick up. Different peer advisors covered different time slots for this “fake networking session,” and Manpreet was assigned to her timeslot. “At this session, I was given a fake name,” Manpreet remembers. “We got to chatting in a group setting—strictly business—at the session. Later that day we ran into each other several times and she kept using my fake name to say hi to me—really she was just flirting with me.”
“For the record—I definitely made the first move,” Maisha jokes.
About a week later, Manpreet asked Maisha to his fraternity’s formal. They started dating shortly thereafter, and the couple got engaged in March of 2022—a little over six years after meeting. “I wanted the proposal to be really well executed and thoughtful even if that meant pushing out the date rather than feeling rushed,” Manpreet says. “Maisha had gotten so used to expecting it every weekend, every date, every trip that it actually became really easy to make it a surprise.”
Although they lived in New York City, they hadn’t really spent any time being tourists in their own city. “We had always thrown around the idea of taking a helicopter tour above the city, so I thought that could be the perfect surprise as she wouldn’t be thrown off by the extravagance of it given it’s something we’d always wanted to do,” Manpreet remembers. “I purposely brought up the idea last minute, citing that work was slow, and we might as well take advantage of the excess time.” They headed up to the Westchester airport to catch their helicopter, and everything was going according to plan, or so Manpreet thought.
Having booked a sunset tour, half way through they encountered heavy winds and had to turn back. “Not exactly what I had in mind, but I barely remember the tour as I was nervous the whole time,” Manpreet says. “We had a photographer with us, who the helicopter company told Maisha was going to ride along to take pictures for their marketing materials. She did a great job of keeping Maisha distracted as we landed so she wouldn’t notice the ‘marry me’ sign from far away—and then of course capturing the moment when she said ‘yes.’”
The wedding was held in September 2023 at the Marina Inn Grande Dunes in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, and given both the bride and groom describe themselves as type A personalities, the planning was intense from the start. “We knew we wanted our wedding to be an extremely thoughtful, intentional, heartfelt celebration coupled with meticulous detail and unique, personal touches,” Maisha says. “Because of this, we made sure to find a planner who would allow us to be a part of the wedding planning journey. It also helped that unlike most grooms, Manpreet was extremely involved, which made this big feat more digestible and a fun activity for us to do together. Our Tuesday evening wedding planning calls with Amrita Jhaveri from L’Escape became a weekly ritual. This was the first wedding in both of our families, so there was a steep learning curve, and Amrita was helpful every step of the way.”
The couple quickly settled on Marina Inn Grande Dunes in Myrtle Beach for their venue, as Maisha grew up visiting South Carolina with her family. “The Marina Inn was the perfect destination for our wedding because it allowed all of our 155 guests to be under the same roof,” Maisha says. “This added a real element of fun and celebration since all our guests had to leave their obligations behind before boarding their flights.”
The weekend kicked off with a pre-wedding event on Wednesday evening for anyone who had arrived early, and then Manpreet flew in later that night with a bunch of friends from New York. “As soon as they all arrived, the bar in the hotel blew up,” Maisha remembers. “It was an impromptu pre-wedding event that was amazing. All our guests that were already in the hotel met there, and we all chatted, had drinks, and mingled, to the point where the staff had to shut off the lights because we had overstayed our welcome!”
Maisha’s mehndi took place on Thursday afternoon. “Because I was doing a fusion wedding—Indian events but was also wearing a white dress—I only applied mehndi on the inside of my hands and my feet,” Maisha explains. “This was a good daytime event to get people together and get to meet each other before they were together all weekend.”
That evening, they also hosted dinner by the pool. Guests mixed and mingled over Italian food at make your own pasta stations, and the night ended with tiramisu shooters. “We wanted the weekend to build up in terms of formality, so it was really important to have this feel super casual and approachable,” Maisha says. “I wore a midi white linen dress, and Manpreet wore linen khakis, a cream short sleeve button up, and Air Forces. We wanted the vibe to be chic, effortless, casual, and intimate.”
Friday morning was the first ceremony—a Sikh ceremony, otherwise known as an Anand Karaj—to honor Manpreet’s culture and religion. Set at the Ocean Club, it started with a baraat, which is a procession from the groom’s side. “Manpreet entered the baraat on the largest white horse we’ve ever laid eyes on,” Maisha jokes. “With family and friends in tow, a mobile DJ, and a dhol—which is an Indian festive drum—player to keep the dancing going throughout the 30-minute affair and met my family at the end of the procession, signaling a coming together of the families.”
