Bhavin and Nikita Sampat weren’t sure if they’d be able to have their wedding ceremony in Rapid City — not for a lack of venues, but for those willing to have an open flame surrounded by a canopy.
“Without the fire, there’s no meaning of what we’re doing, so we always had concerns,” Nikita said. “Wherever we went to see, the first thing that we told them was we talked about this. Some of them were comfortable, some were not.”
She said they were worried they were asking too much to hold their traditional Hindu ceremony, but the willingness of the Courtyard by Marriott staff made the couple’s wedding possible.
“We were always down to cooperate and see what we can compromise on, what we can make happen to make sure everybody’s safe, of course,” Bhavin said. “We wouldn’t like a rainy wedding.”
The Sampats married Saturday in front of a small crowd of 60-80 people compared to the typical hundreds expected to attend Indian Hindu weddings.
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Bhavin and Nikita, who live in Summerset, married on paper in India in 2019 after speaking for about a year online as Bhavin worked in California. Nikita said despite the paper marriage and the engagement, until the wedding ceremony is held, the couple isn’t considered official.
Bhavin moved to Summerset in 2019 after GenPro Energy Solutions bought the company he was working for. Bhavin said he was one of three employees who moved to South Dakota.
When the couple started talking in 2018, Nikita lived in Jamnagar in west India and was working on her master’s to become a physical therapist. Bhavin said theirs is an arranged marriage, which is a cultural tradition that’s become more modernized. He said his dad knew Nikita’s growing up, knew they had kids looking for a match and connected them.
Nikita said Bhavin knew right away she was the one, but she was a little more wary. She said she didn’t know he was the one until he was cooking bhindi masala, an okra curry dish.
“I was impressed,” she said. “I was like, ‘Oh, he knows how to cook that. He’s definitely the one.’”
Bhavin said it took them a while to meet face to face because he couldn’t travel due to work, so they dated long distance through Facebook, WhatsApp and other social media. The two finally met after a year of talking. Bhavin said their families had the impression they liked each other and were going to be engaged. He said he planned a surprise proposal, Nikita said yes and they had the engagement ceremony.
The couple said they wanted to have their marriage ceremony, but the pandemic interrupted those plans.
“We would have done it in India, but given the situation and everybody’s travel abilities, we decided to do it here because we have our close families here spread out across the country, so we could just have them travel to us and it would be more like a destination wedding in a sense,” Bhavin said.
He said he never thought it’d be possible to host a full-fledged Indian wedding ceremony since there’s a very small community and no temple and thus no priest. He said they didn’t even think to have it in Rapid City until October or November 2021 when his friend and colleague Nickie Tibbitts, director of technology sales at GenPro, encouraged him to.
Tibbitts said Bhavin and Nikita were considering holding the ceremony in Los Angeles or Texas where there is a larger Indian community and more venues that would allow the ceremony. She said with the cost and stress the couple would be under, she recommended holding it in the Black Hills and helped talk to venues to explain the ceremony.
The wedding ceremony includes a small exposed flame that represents the Hindu god of fire, who is formally invited to the wedding the day before the ceremony and serves as witness during the vows.
Nikita said she and Bhavin did a trial run with the hotel, fire marshal and fire chief to show what the ceremony would include. In the end, they agreed to shut off the sprinkler system for about 20 minutes so the couple could take their vows.
There was also concern about the horse the groom is supposed to ride in on, and the decorations.
Anup Ved, Bhavin’s cousin and best man at the wedding, said if the wedding was in India or another state, there wouldn’t have been any issues.
“We don’t need to worry about it because there’s a lot of an Indian population in most of the states,” he said. “In Rapid City, it’s not. If you go to a local store to find such things, you’re not going to get it.”
Ved said instead of having golden pots near the mandap, or the canopy where the actual vow and wedding ceremonies take place, they spray painted pots that look similar to what’s needed. He said the priest was also flown in from Los Angeles.
Ved said he and his wife Pooja flew in from Brooklyn, New York to attend the wedding. He said when they married about 10 years ago, they just showed up for the ceremony and their families planned everything, as is typically custom. Bhavin and Nikita, though, planned everything themselves.
He said despite that, though, and the challenges the Sampats faced, the wedding was fairly comparable to a traditional Hindu wedding.
“Minus the guests,” Ved said. “There’s a lot more dancing, a lot more music going on.”
— Contact Siandhara Bonnet at siandhara.bonnet@rapidcityjournal.com —
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Couple overcomes challenges to hold traditional Hindu wedding in Rapid City - Rapid City Journal
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