How I’m Creating Cultural Traditions For My Queer Wedding

I didn’t start dreaming of my wedding until I got engaged — and even then, I didn’t know where to start. I’m Pakistani, and most Pinterest searches for South Asian weddings showed couples wearing colorful outfits during days of celebrations, surrounded by hundreds of family members and practicing choreographed dances in venues decorated with enough florals to fill a garden.

Most of these photos didn’t reflect my own experience as a queer Pakistani woman. My partner is Filipino, and as a queer Filipino-Pakistani couple, we didn’t envision ourselves carrying out many of the typical wedding traditions. I didn’t see myself walking down the aisle with my family, and we didn’t want a rukhsati, a South Asian tradition in which your family “hands you off” to your future partner. We’ve been living our own lives for a long time, so there’s no reason for us to be “given away.”

We learned to dream of what a wedding day could look like that centered us, not one based on these far-off ideals or Pinterest boards that told us what the day should look like.

Even after getting engaged, we put off wedding planning for a while. Part of me was afraid that my friends and family wouldn’t prioritize our celebration or accept us as a queer couple. I remember talking to my dad about the idea of having a Western ceremony and a Pakistani reception in an effort to bridge my identities, and his reply was, “Why? Nobody would come anyway.” And after looking through a few wedding vendor forms that only had name fields for the “bride” and “groom,” it became clear that we needed a strong advocate in an industry that wasn’t made for us.

Thankfully, we found support and community in The Gay Agenda Collective, a queer wedding and event planning company that my partner had been following on social media for years. In a time when we felt really alone in the wedding planning process, which was supposed to be the countdown to the happiest day of our lives, the founder Zabrina Zablan-Duvauchelle and her team made it feel like there was a place for us. We learned to dream of what a wedding day could look like that centered us, not one based on these far-off ideals or Pinterest boards that told us what the day should look like. In this liminal space, we found a place to make traditions for ourselves. And knowing that The Gay Agenda Collective was based in Hawaii and that so much of my partner’s family had lived there, everything felt like it was falling into place.

One of our new traditions was born out of discussions between me and my partner about approaching our entrances during the ceremony. I had dreamed of entering the wedding ceremony under a phoolon ki chadar, or flower canopy, which is held over the bride by her loved ones as she walks down the aisle. Given the logistics of getting one made in Hawaii, and the fact that not much of my family was coming to the wedding, I initially brushed off this idea as superfluous. But my partner was determined to give me this moment and ended up creating a canopy that she built and covered it in flowers I loved like hydrangeas, hibiscus flowers, and marigolds. I’m excited to have my friends hold this canopy overhead as I make my way to my partner, serving as a reminder that my chosen family is just as important to me as the one I was born into. And it also serves as a reminder that I deserved to be celebrated, grand entrance and all.

My partner and I have also been thinking about how our cultures can show up in our attire too. In my partner’s case, she’s wearing Cambio & Co jewelry from the regions of the Philippines where her parents were born, as well as my grandma’s bracelet as an anklet and a handpiece that matches my tikka, a headpiece worn on the forehead. I’ll wear jewelry that my mom got me from Pakistan and a white lehenga from the incredible South Asian designer Seema Gujaral, bringing my Pakistani culture into a modern outfit that still feels like me. And my partner and I are both wearing mehndi, or henna, as a sign of our unity as a couple.

The wedding traditions we’ve chosen are born out of our third culture identities, bringing our Filipino and Pakistani customs with us to our life in Seattle, where we live authentically as queer women of color. Still, not everything is joy and rainbows. While planning the wedding, we realized we often needed to come out to vendors and people we meet, which is something that we’ll probably need to do for the rest of our lives. In these moments, my partner and I learned to lean on each other to remember that we’re blazing our own trail. We are forging a new life together, and just because we haven’t seen it before in our family doesn’t mean that we can’t create something new.

At the end of the day, having a union matters much more to me than having a wedding. I’m grateful that I get to build a life with someone who loves me wholly and embraces all aspects of my culture. And when I envision myself walking down the aisle to my partner with my sequins and gold jewelry glowing in the O’ahu sun, surrounded by my closest friends, I remember why I’m doing all of this in the first place: queer love is powerful, and our story deserves to be celebrated.

Aleenah Ansari is a queer Pakistani writer based in Seattle. She covers travel, entrepreneurship, mental health and wellness, and representation in media for PS, Insider, The Seattle Times, Byrdie, and more.