Some weddings are planned around a destination, season, or family expectations. Brooklyn-based Rhea Almeida and Jaime Ford planned their walk down the aisle around a sunset. “We both loved the idea of a waterfront property in order to get that perfect sunset ‘I do’.” The brides had already been legally married in New York since 2024, but a courthouse certificate was never going to be the full story. Rhea, a policy expert leading digital advocacy campaigns for an education policy think tank, and Jaime, an art director and illustrator, knew their real wedding had to happen in Mumbai, in front of Rhea’s family, on the coastline that raised her. Five days, two brides and not a single outsourced detail later, their celebration was less like a templated dream wedding and more like an honest, unfiltered self-portrait.
A Love Story That Began Amidst A Historic Moment
Rhea and Jaime’s story started in a Brooklyn park in the middle of a citywide celebration. “We met on Bumble six years ago. I sent the first text,” Rhea recalls. Their first date was set for a bar on November 7, 2020, the morning Joe Biden won the election. Jaime asked Rhea to meet her in McCarren Park instead, where 30 friends and a DJ had taken over. “We laid down a picnic blanket, drank wine, and had our first date. There was an instant connection that felt rare,” Rhea remembers.
When Jaime describes the proposal, it reads like a scavenger hunt through their own relationship. On a long weekend trip to Denver in February, ostensibly to see the city’s botanical gardens, Rhea, a self-described Bombay girl who hates the cold, walked Jaime through their own history one memory at a time. “She started getting sentimental, and asked me if I remember the first park we met at, and she reached in her pocket, causing my heart to skip a beat, and pulled out a wine cork with that date on it, and said ‘Happy Valentine’s Day’,” Jaime recalls. From there, the gifts kept coming. “At that point I’d caught on to what was going on,” Jaime says. The final object was a ring box. “She asked me if I’d marry her. I said yes faster than she could finish the question.”
Planning A Wedding That Looked Like Them
The self-planning process was a lesson in navigating queer visibility. During venue scouting, Rhea and her parents made a conscious decision to be upfront about the fact that this was a wedding between two women. “The main opposition we faced was while picking venues. Several venues were hesitant or just flat-out refused when they found out it was a same-sex wedding,” says Rhea. Rather than negotiate acceptance, they simply moved on. “If they had a problem with it, we would say BYE and just leave.” Eventually, they found partners who embraced their vision. Their wedding unfolded across two venues that responded with a simple yet meaningful sentiment: “Love is love.”
“Our colourful multi-day celebration was truly a raw, unapologetic showcase of ourselves, and not something picked out of a magazine,” says Jaime. Almost every detail was personalised, from the décor and wardrobes, to the signage and cocktails. “It was important to us to find vendors who were able to execute this self portrait of an event perfectly. I designed four cocktails as well as the invites, gifts, logo, website and signage. The custom cocktails were called Bandra Blush, Arabian Sea Martini, Jaime’s Gin-Jeera Fizz and Rhea’s Kokum Koncoction, which used Indian ingredients and flavours,” adds Jaime.
The Intimate Mehndi & Welcome Dinner
The five-day celebration with an informal bridal mehndi at Rhea’s parents’ house, with only close family present. “We wanted to keep it very close knit and intimate, quite akin how mehndis were designed to bring the women of both families together over food and love,” Rhea says.
That same night, the brides-to-be hosted their wedding party of 60 guests at the local gymkhana Rhea has frequented since childhood. The evening was designed as a soft landing before the week’s bigger celebrations, particularly for Jaime’s family and the contingent of New York friends who had flown in for the occasion. Rhea’s father surprised the room with a five-minute video chronicling her life from infancy through her teenage years and into the present, including the moment Jaime entered the family fold. “She has seamlessly woven herself into the fabric of my friends and family here,” Rhea says.
A Love Letter To Bandra
The next morning, the couple headed to Bandra Fort for their pre-wedding portraits. “One of my favourite things about us is how we transcend style typecasts for lesbian women, and are able to switch between being the masc or the femme ones depending on the day,” Rhea notes. The pair drew an audience of curious onlookers. “It’s not every day you see two women holding hands and kissing in public dressed like they just eloped from a church,” Rhea laughs. For the photography, the couple turned to Param P. Talaulikar behind 49thestudio, who had shot Rhea’s sister’s wedding in 2023. The chemistry was immediate enough that Rhea and Jaime, not engaged at the time, told him they’d be the ones to call when their own day came. Three years later, they did. “They captured every moment with patience, dedication and laughter.”
The Rustic Sangeet
That evening, the celebration moved to Pioneer Hall, a heritage Portuguese bungalow in Bandra, for the sangeet. The brief, in Rhea’s words, was “Wildflower Rustic Maximalism,” a palette of purple, orange, yellow, green and brown layered over a rustic, nature-driven design language. Jaime, drawing on her art direction background, envisioned the wooden bungalow as though wildflowers were growing out of every crevice. Lights, lanterns and flowers covered nearly every surface.
The music moved between Bollywood and English tracks. After nine performances by friends and family, a dance by the brides closed the night. “Our dance featured Maine Payal Hai Chankai by Falguni Pathak, a personal nod to an Indian queer icon, alongside We Found Love by Rihanna and a 90s throwback in Chunnari Chunnari, complete with red chunnaris as props,” says Rhea.
For the sangeet look, both brides wore ombre lehengas spanning pinks, blues and purples, finished in heavy, maximalist beadwork that mirrored the wildflower décor. “Since we are not very traditional, Rhea decided to have a shoulder piece instead of a dupatta,” Jaime explains. The colour palette carried a nod to the lesbian pride flag, a personalisation woven so seamlessly into the design that it read as aesthetic before it read as symbolism.
The Wedding By The Arabian Sea
The wedding on March 1, 2026 at the heritage Juhu Hotel, with 200 close family and friends seated to face the sunset as the bridal party made its way down the aisle. The theme, called “Gardenia leaned leaning into the green lawns and Arabian sea backdrop of the venue. It featured candles, lanterns and tasteful flowers in dusty rose, white and sage green. We had a photobooth with printable pictures, so everyone got a little souvenir from their time at our wedding,” shares Rhea.
Rhea’s grandmother, true to her new title of Flower Grandmother, led the processional, a moment loaded with meaning given her early difficulty accepting Rhea’s coming out. “Eventually she accepted our love over time, and has grown to absolutely adore Jaime. The ceremony was co-officiated by Ketaki, my closest friend from my school days in Mumbai, and Aaron, our close friend from New York, a pairing that literally brought our two worlds together at the altar,” says Rhea.
For the ceremony, both women wore lehengas by Shlok Design, chosen for how precisely the colours and embellishments complemented their respective skin tones and silhouettes. At the heart of the ceremony sat the vow and ring exchange that mattered most. The rings shaped as mirrored yin-yangs slipped onto each other’s hands as their version of the customary marital exchange, a personal rewrite of the mangalsutra tradition reimagined on their terms. “We recited personal vows to each other and were declared married just as the orange sun was setting on the horizon,” the duo shares.
Following a cocktail hour, the couple cut into a cake topped by a custom topper gifted by their friend Luisa, depicting a brown woman in a red lehenga and a white blonde woman in a white lehenga, dressed in the exact lehengas the brides wore that day. “It looked shockingly like us,” Rhea says. Two close friends and both fathers gave speeches that moved the room between tears and laughter. For their first dance, the couple chose Christina Perri’s cover of Stevie Wonder’s Isn’t She Lovely. The dance floor and an Indian buffet opened soon after, and the celebration carried on at the Rhea family residence until 5am.
Designing A Wedding For Inclusion
Perhaps the defining theme of this wedding was community. “Our friends officiated the ceremony; our walk-down-the-aisle music was composed by musician and friend Bradley Cashman and sung by vocalist and friend Cynthia Lewis; our sisters were our maids of honour; our friend and cofounder of Yara New York designed our engagement and wedding rings. Our community is full of creatives,” says Jaime.
“Each element was put together by someone in our community. If that isn’t a story of queer love, I don’t know what is. It’s all about deep community,” adds Rhea.
The Brides’ Checklist
The Brides: Rhea Almeida and Jaime Ford
Photography & Videography: 49thestudio
Venues: Pioneer Hall and Juhu Hotel
Wedding Outfits: Shlok Design
Jewellery: Minerali Store
Stylist: Neha Chaudhary
Makeup & Hair: Malcolm M Fernandes
Custom wedding rings: Yara New York
