Grey skies and stubborn showers failed to dampen the vibrant suite of celebrations during a traditional Indian Sikh wedding at the Pasadena Convention Center on Saturday.
Inside the banquet hall, hundreds of guests milled about in their finest silk salwar kameez - the traditional pant-shirt suit of South and Central Asia - a jewel-toned mosaic set aflame with crimson and fuchsia turbans.
They were waiting for the groom to enter - an event that typically involves a festooned horse, a drummer and a round of exuberant dancing.
Such religious affairs are usually hosted in a Sikh Temple - but there were none in the area big enough to accommodate the 400 or so guests who had flown in from all over the world to attend, family members explained.
Careful planning and decoration - including white sheets lining the floors and hanging along the length of the walls, religious singers, as well as a special platform for the granthi (Sikh priest) and one for the Sikh's holy scripture - helped transform one of the Convention Center's bland banquet halls into a luminous, spiritual enclave.
"I always dreamed about it being this way, but I never thought it would be this big," said the bride, Asees Sethi of Pasadena, during one of the pre-wedding celebrations leading up to Saturday.
Asked how long she'd been planning it, Sethi said, "10 months - since the moment I got engaged."
Indian weddings are designed by the families, she explained, noting that everything in her's would be according to tradition - save a few elements she had insisted on.
"I really wanted to have flower girls and a ring bearer, which is definitely not normal; I wanted bridesmaids to enter before me because I wanted an element of Western culture in the ceremony," said Sethi, who was born to Indian parents in Japan but grew up in the U.S.
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