Indian Traditions and Old New York Style Took Center Stage at This Wedding at Carnegie Hall
While we’re all currently social distancing and committed to mask wearing, this wedding took place in the months before the coronavirus pandemic began. We hope it will bring some joy to your reading list.
Even though Rishi Magia, the creative product lead for Instagram Shopping, and Daniel Plaut, a VP of National Video Investment at Publicis Media, grew up and went to college in wildly different parts of the country—the former was in Texas and the latter in Delaware—it really is a small world because they ended up with a few mutual friends in New York City. “I always had my eye on him,” Dan says. “We’d been to a few parties and brunches together, and I thought he was cute. Rishi, bless his heart, was completely oblivious to all of it.”
“In my defense, I was living out my fantasy of working in fashion doing PR at Oscar de la Renta and had been extremely single for a long time, so I didn’t think twice about it!” Rishi retorts. Eventually, they were both invited to a mutual friend’s birthday party, and Dan could sense that this was his chance. While everyone was dancing the night away, all of their friends mysteriously took off, leaving Rishi and Dan together. “It gave me the perfect chance to say ‘I like you,’” Dan remembers. “I asked him out and told him I’d call him the next day with plans.”
“I’ll never forget the following day,” Rishi recalls. “I was wildly hungover, alternating between shoving Chipotle in my face and being horizontal on the couch when Dan kept his promise. He called me and asked me out on a date. It took one three-hour dinner at Uva on the Upper East Side, and the rest is history.” The two dated for a casual 7.5 years. “Let’s just say people were ready for the wedding!” Dan jokes.
Rishi is a serial non-planner, but they’d both agreed that he would be the one to pop the question, so pulling off a proposal was a monumental task for him. “With the help of our best friends Matt Barry and Liz Van Wie, we developed a ruse where Matt was ‘gifted 2 tickets’ to see Mean Girls the musical and invited me to the show with him,” Rishi explains. “Afterwards, the four of us were going to be ‘meeting up for dinner’ back in Brooklyn.”
Dan, an avid theater fan and Mean Girls fanatic, was freaking out. “I love Mean Girls!” he says. “But I played it off pretty cool, which is mostly what my takeaway from that was. In hindsight, Rishi was doing such a good job!”
Matt and Rishi were so committed to the bit that they actually took a photo in front of the theater in Hell’s Kitchen to post to Instagram and got playbills to prove they were there. Meanwhile, Liz was keeping Dan occupied at the apartment, catching up before they all met up for dinner.
Eventually, Matt and Rishi made their way back to Brooklyn, where they grabbed flowers and decorated a spot on the Brooklyn Heights Promenade, a block from the apartment, while they waited for Liz to bring Dan over. “It was a drizzly day, which worked out perfectly because there wasn’t a soul on the Promenade,” Rishi says. “So when Dan rounded the corner and saw me standing there, the moment was just for us.”
“I was completely surprised and shocked—and we have the not-so-glamourous photos to prove it!” Dan says. “Rishi’s proposal was perfect and heartfelt, in a spot that meant so much to us, where we frequently go for walks, enjoying the view of the Manhattan skyline and talking about how much we love our neighborhood.” Right after Dan said “yes,” Rishi revealed that they were going to the 1 Hotel Brooklyn Bridge for drinks. When they entered the lobby, 30 of their closest family and friends were waiting in the lounge for a second surprise. After more happy tears, tons of hugs, ring-showing-off, and lots of champagne, they walked home along Brooklyn Bridge Park; the rain had let up, and the newly engaged couple reveled in the energy and significance of the day.
Initially, they went back and forth between getting married in the city versus in the Hudson Valley, where Dan is from. Once they decided on the city, finding a venue that could fit their multicultural wedding with 200 guests was the next hurdle. “I think we visited over 40 places before we found the one!” Dan says. “Ironically, our planner Nirali Shah, who is based in Houston, ultimately found the perfect place, and we were thrilled it ended up being the iconic New York City institution, Carnegie Hall. Even living here and attending performances there, we had no idea they did weddings!”
Carnegie Hall, with its breathtaking space and old world charm with modern flourishes, was exactly the aesthetic they were going for. Plus, Rishi has been an oboist for 20 years and actively plays in a Brooklyn-based wind ensemble, so it really seemed as though this venue was predestined.
Nirali helped plan everything. “We knew we wanted someone who had experience with South Asian weddings,” Rishi explains. “Dan and I come from two very different backgrounds, and we wanted our wedding to reflect both of our cultures equally. As a first-generation Indian American, I have extremely close ties to my heritage, as does Dan now, who has fully immersed himself in Indian culture over the past nine years, and we wanted to celebrate that.”
They decided that for the ceremony and cocktail hour, they would wear traditional sherwanis, which are bespoke, couture creations handmade in India. “We have to shout out Rishi’s mom, Manju, and aunt Rupa, without whom our absolutely gorgeous outfits could not have been made,” Dans says. “They liaised with the tailors, seamstresses, and embroiderers, sending measurements, photos, embroidery samples, fabric, and color options for months leading up to the wedding. We also wanted our wedding party to really experience the joy of wearing Indian clothes, so we gifted them all coordinating outfits as well.”
