Meet The Modern Indian Bride Who Wore A Pantsuit To Her Wedding

This Indian Bride walked down the aisle in a powder-blue pantsuit, ditching the all-time favoured lehenga in her traditional Indian wedding, simply because she loves suits.

This has surely got various bride-to-be wondering on how to make a bold statement by wearing the power suit. Lately, in the West, various women are opting for a bridal pantsuit. Even designers have started promoting trousers as a part of their wedding collection and various celebrities are endorsing this trend too. Last year, Game of Thrones actress Sophie Turner wore a pair of white trousers when she married musician Joe Jonas in Las Vegas.

But the bride in talk, Ms Sanjana Rishi’s suit is quite unusual for an Indian wedding wear silk and lehengas are the staple wear and not the pantsuit. Indian brides usually like to wear Indian attire along with the traditional jewellery from their mothers and grandmothers.

This whole concept is extremely new to the people and shhe sure stood out. Ms. Sanjana is an Indian-American entrepreneur who recently got married to Delhi businessman, Dhruv Mahajan, 33, on 20 September in the capital, Delhi.

She has also worked as a corporate lawyer in the US before coming back to India and living with her beau for over a year.  The original plan for this wedding was supposed to be a wedding in September in the US - where the bride's brother and most of her friends live - and a second traditional Indian wedding in Delhi in November.

But due to covid, their plans got derailed and unlike USA, in India, people don’t accept live-in relationships. Even though her parents are very progressive, due to external pressure from friends, neighbours and extended family, they decided to get married.

One fine morning, they woke up and took the decision to get married. The bride knew what she wanted to wear the moment she decided that she was getting married. A believer of sustainable fashion, Ms. Rishi often buys second-hand clothes and had spot her wedding outfit in a boutique in Italy long time ago.

A classic vintage suit made by Italian designer Gianfranco Ferré in the 1990s. She was beyond delighted to know that it was still available. Growing up, she had seen all strong modern women whom she idolised wearing a suit and coming from a law background, it was a natural choice. 

The wedding was super intimate with only 11 people attending it including the bride, groom and priest. The wedding took place in th groom’s backyard and Ms. Rishi said that she would look overdressed if she wore an elaborate wedding lehenga when everyone was wearing casuals.

The groom, Mr. Mahajan didn’t know what was she wearing till he saw her. He says she looked so angelic and gorgeous that he didn’t even notice that she was wearing trousers at first.

Various friends, friends, fashion designers, and fashionistas approved to her choice of clothing and commented on her social media.

"OMG, how great do you look!!!" wrote designer Masaba Gupta; and Rhea Kapoor, Bollywood producer and actress Sonam Kapoor's sister, described her look as "awesome".

She also received her fair share of comments and trolls who accused her of bringing bad name to Indian culture and as an attention-seeker who would go to any lengths to show her feminism. Ms. Rishi didn’t understand the harm and said men wear pantsuits at weddings all the time and nobody questions them - but when a woman wears it then it gets everyone's goat. She feels this is because women are always held to stricter standards.

Even though she agreed she wasn’t trying to make any sort of political statement, she agrees, unknowingly she may have. She said that once she put her pictures up, various women came back saying how they got encouraged to stand up to their parents or in-laws about what to wear at their wedding.

Her unusual choice could become a spark point - it may go into a flame, or it may die out too.

We hope it is the former.