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.”
For the sherwanis, they started with a color palette of black and gold and added touches of sea foam and pale pink. “I may or may not have made a moodboard!” Rishi jokes. “The final detail we both loved were our shoes,” Dans adds. “My mother-in-law gifted us black velvet loafers with gold embroidery, and while definitely extra, they really completed our looks.”
Dan and Rishi walked down the aisle together to a cover of Tina Turner’s “Simply the Best” as sung by Noah Reid in Schitt’s Creek. “Right before we walked out, I thought I was going to faint,” Dan admits. “I thought I was just nervous, but realized it was the culmination of the entire build-up and anticipation of that moment. I couldn’t believe it was happening.” The ceremony began with a Hindu prayer by Rishi’s grandmother, and their close friends Joel Pettit and Laura Barganier married the couple. “Together, they created something that was moving, sentimental, hilarious, and quirky,” Dan remembers. “There may or may not have been a couple of Real Housewives references.”
“I had butterflies in my stomach the whole time,” Rishi says. “Someone once told me to make sure and look out onto the sea of your guests and take in that moment, which I did—and it struck me just how lucky we are to both have such loving and supportive family and friends. We fully recognize our privilege because so many of our LGBTQIA brothers and sisters don’t have that.”
Dan echoes Rishi’s sentiments: “My parents and I have always had a loving and healthy relationship, but the significance of being able to celebrate our unique wedding day with them was monumental. During the ceremony, I didn’t cry but was hyper in-tune with every emotion on display. It felt like everything was happening in fast-forward, so I made a concerted effort to hang my attention on every word in order to savor the moment and slow everything down.”
Afterwards, guests made their way onto the Weill Terrace of Carnegie Hall for cocktail hour-and-a-half, which featured an open bar, a string quartet by Diverse Concert Artists, and Indian fusion hors d’oeuvres by caterers Bombay Talk.
Dinner was buffet-style, and there were a number of speeches throughout. “Hands down, the most moving part of the night was the speech given by my dad,” Rishi says. “He had suffered a stroke three weeks before our wedding day. There was a point in which we didn’t even know if he was going to be able to fly from Texas to attend. From his wheelchair, with my mom by his side holding up her iPhone flashlight so he could reach his speech, he brought every single person to tears with his incredibly heartfelt words about Dan and me. Similar to Dan, I have a wonderful relationship with my parents and brother—they’ve been by my side through the ups and downs of coming out, and all of that was marked by my dad’s exceptional speech.”
“Honestly, it destroyed all of us—there was not a dry eye in the house!” Dan adds. “It’s a moment that we will never, ever forget. Life comes at you fast, and my father-in-law’s stroke really reminded us to appreciate our loved ones every day.”
When dinner ended, drinks and dancing started upstairs in the flipped ceremony space that the incredible team at Constellation Culinary Group had recreated. “I loved seeing my big, brown, rowdy family light up the dance floor,” Rishi says. “They know how to party and certainly brought the energy we both wanted for the reception! We told DJ BK of Luxe Event Entertainment that his set should feel like ‘Bollywood meets a gay bar,’ and he definitely delivered. By the end of the night, everyone was sweaty and smiling.”
When the music stopped and the lights turned on, the couple’s planner, Nirali, whisked them back to the grooms’ suite where they signed their marriage certificate with their officiants and their best man and woman by their sides. “It was the first time our wedding party was in the same room alone, and we were able to reflect on the amazing day we just experienced,” Dan notes. “There was a lot of love, gratitude, hugging, and tears.”
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Indian Traditions and Old New York Style Took Center Stage at This Wedding at Carnegie Hall - Vogue
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