Members of the Shroff family, including Bindu, left, Divya, Arati and Hakumat, prepare Puneet for his wedding ceremony at the Lodge at Ventana Canyon by placing a pure silver headdress, called a mukat, on his head.

Mamta Popat / Arizona Daily Star

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Flowing silk, georgette and crepe in bright oranges, greens, reds and turquoises swirl in a sea of dancers. Gold jewelry glitters on wrists, ears and noses, and long matching scarves are flipped over shoulders. Excited chatter in Hindi and other regional Indian languages occasionally competes with hip-shaking Bollywood and Indian folk tunes. The extravagant traditional Indian wedding involved three days of jubilant celebration. The event, with its four Tucson locations and almost 400 guests from the world over, was more than the marriage of a man and woman; it was the joyous union of two families.

Little girls dream about their weddings. Some dream bigger than others.

Rachna Trivedi jokes that she began planning her wedding shortly after birth.

"I always said if I wasn't going to be a doctor, I would be a wedding planner," says the 27-year-old St. Gregory College Preparatory School graduate.

Rachna got her chance after she met Puneet Shroff, 29, in the fall of 2004 when they both began internal medicine residencies in St. Louis. Puneet proposed last March and the wedding planning began immediately.

"I knew it was going to be big because of the size of our families and community," the bride says. "Indian weddings are supposed to be grand."

The wedding is a major celebration for the tight-knit Indian community that Rachna grew up with in Tucson and for Puneet's family, most of whom live in India. Traditional Indian weddings tend to be as lavish as the family can afford, and "Rachna wanted it to be pretty elaborate," says her father, Deven Trivedi.

With four events over three days, planning for the large, traditional celebration proves to be complicated — requiring that expert help be flown in from all over the country. It is also expensive, costing around $400,000, says Sonal Shah, the New York-based consultant specializing in ethnic weddings who was hired for the event. But the grand, late-March wedding goes off as planned with generous parents, a considerate sister willing to devote several weeks for the last-minute preparations and a half-dozen local friends of Rachna's parents working to bring the bride's childhood visions into a 21st-century reality worthy of a fairy tale.

The mehndi function, when the bride's hands and feet are decorated with henna, kicks off the wedding celebrations on March 29. Rachna, dressed in a sleeveless orange punjabi (a long tunic over tight pants) covered with hundreds of shiny beads, sits on a bench in the entry room of the Foothills home her parents and maternal grandparents share. She greets friends and family, who leave their shoes at the door when they arrive, and shows off the intricate pencil-thin designs that mehndi artist Ushma Bavishi drew on the bride's hands and feet over four hours earlier in the day. The spectacularly intricate designs, which become reddish-brown temporary skin decoration, are a traditional part of an Indian bride's wedding.

"The deeper the color the more your husband loves you," teases Zarna Shah, one of the three Phoenix-based mehndi artists hired for the event.

The artists work while seated on bright green and yellow mattresses on the entry room floor. Female guests, waiting their turn to have a hand decorated, sit on silk and velvet pillows on the floor. The male guests, mostly in neutral-colored suits, drift to the next room.

"Traditionally, it is just women, but we're opening it up to everyone because my groom's whole family is here," Rachna says of the mehndi function.

About 60 members of the groom's family traveled from India, Australia and Hong Kong to attend the momentous wedding — Puneet is the first family member to be married in America.

Dinner — a catered vegetarian buffet with Mexican, Italian and Chinese foods — is served in the backyard. After dinner, friends and relatives mingle, the women carefully holding their painted hands cupped before them. Soon the entry hall is abuzz with gossip in several regional Indian languages and festive Bollywood tunes fill the air.

Word of the groom's family's arrival spreads and a welcome group forms at the front door. One by one the extended family enters the decorated room and places an ornate package at Rachna's feet. The bride and groom greet everyone and pose for pictures.

The stereo blasts Bollywood music again and many of the 170 guests begin dancing barefoot on the entryway rug. Rachna, grinning all night, declares the evening a success.

"Everyone is having fun — that's the point of everything," she says. "It's the one easygoing, free-flowing event during the wedding. The program is to have no program."

The second evening begins much as the first ended — with exuberant dancing. Stunning performances followed by traditional group dancing make the sangeet on March 30 a jubilant affair.

In the middle of the 10,000-square-foot Grand Ballroom at the Doubletree Hotel lies a wooden dance floor with a gold fountain at its center. Red tablecloths topped with bright green napkins fill the room and red garlands hang from the ceiling. A couch covered in tapestries and pillows sits on a stage in front of a white and green curtained backdrop.

"The décor is very important because it creates the Indian feeling," says the bride's father, who hired a decorator from Ohio who specializes in ethnic weddings.

The 350 guests are dressed formally, with yards of flowing fabrics and glittering jewelry. Puneet, who simply wore a suit the night before, dons a red tunic with matching pants and scarf. Rachna appears in a lime green chaniya choli (short top and long flowing skirt) with delicate beadwork and metallic appliqué embroidery.

With the bride and groom settled on stage, the performances begin on the dance floor. Rachna's sister, Neema Trivedi, 23, hosts the program, which is inspired by the bride's passion for classical East Indian dance. Female family members and friends present traditional Indian folk dances, which tell stories through dramatic facial expressions, hand flares and acrobatic leaps and bends. Puneet's sisters, Divya Shroff, 31, and Arati Shroff, 27, chronicle the couple's relationship in song.

"I cried multiple times," Rachna says later. "It meant so much to me."

Shortly after Magic Mike, a New York-based Indian disc jockey who is famous within the international Indian community, begins spinning tunes and guests head to the dance floor in droves, a spicy aroma fills the ballroom. Jay Bharat, a longtime friend of the Trivedi family and one of the largest Indian caterers on the West Coast, presents a Bombay-style dinner consisting of savory finger foods served in five decorated food carts.

"The next three meals in a row will be Indian cuisine from different parts of India," says Deven, the bride's father.

After dinner, the DJ spins traditional folk tunes, Bollywood favorites and modern techno-folk mixes and the group dancing goes into full swing. Traditional folk dances from Gujarati (the state in western India from which the Trivedi family comes) and Punjabi in northern India (where the Shroffs are from) are fast-tempo and lively with heavy beats.

"In the different states, the food is different, the dress is different and the customs are different," says Bindu Shroff, Puneet's mother. "We are from different areas but we include both cultures."

A Los Angeles-based dhol player keeps beat with the music on the Indian folk drum and the dance floor becomes a whorl of activity. Dancers clap and sing to the music while taking spinning steps that move the group around in a large circle. Later two lines of dancers, each person armed with a pair of dandiya sticks, tap the sticks behind their backs, in front of them and against their partner's sticks to the beat of the music.

"The music is such that you cannot stop dancing," says Deven, who pulls people onto the frenzy until midnight.

Despite the late night sangeet, the wedding party rises around 6 a.m. to prepare for the ceremony at the Lodge at Ventana Canyon.

"We have found an auspicious time for the wedding between 11 and 12," says Deven, who consulted an Indian astrologer. "That's the reason we have to do the early morning planning. For both of them astrologically, this is a good time."

Around 9 a.m. the groom's family gathers for a ceremony to prepare Puneet for his wedding.

Anoop Chandola, a retired University of Arizona professor who comes from a line of Brahmin priests, chants a mantra as the family touches the turban placed on Puneet's head. On top of the turban, they tie a mukat.

"My husband wore it at our wedding," Bindu says of the pure silver crownlike headdress, which has been in the Shroff family for more than 60 years. "It's a tradition in our family. Any boy who gets married in our family gets to wear it. It has the blessings of our elders. The next generation of men will wear it, too."

Turbans and scarves are handed out to the men in the room — maroon for relatives and red for close family friends — and then the baraat, wedding procession, begins. The groom's guests gather on the far side of the Lodge's circular drive and cheer as Puneet is lifted onto a bareback gray horse.

The groom's side dances gleefully to the beat of the dhol and slowly makes its way toward the entrance where the bride's side is waiting and dancing to music provided by Magic Mike. A crowd of hotel guests and golfers openly gawks at the colorful, noisy proceedings.

The two families meet and Amita Trivedi, Rachna's mother, marks Puneet's forehead with kumkum, a sacred red powder signifying good luck. After a series of welcoming rituals, the party moves inside the lobby where Chandola, the priest, says a short prayer before a statue of Ganesha, the elephant-headed god of peace, truth, friendship, happiness and good fortune, to remove obstacles that may arise in the couple's married life.

On the back lawn the large, white wedding tent is festooned with pink and orange flowers hanging from pink ribbons tied to the support beams. Members of both families gather around the mandap, the marriage canopy, waiting for the bridal procession to begin.

"We don't traditionally have bridesmaids in a Hindu ceremony, but I added bridesmaids and groomsmen and there are flower girls and ring boys," Rachna says. "I wanted to include people — I have a large family. Also, having left home at the age of 17, my friends have become my family, so having them walk down the aisle was a given for me."

A sheet, antarpata, is hung so the groom can't see the bride as she walks down the petal-strewn aisle escorted by her maternal uncle, as tradition dictates. Gold and red jewelry — a large necklace, earrings, bracelets and a tikka dangling on her forehead — match her one-of-a-kind pink and orange chaniya choli. When the sheet drops, Puneet's nervous face erupts into a huge grin.

Chandola, who says each mantra in Sanskrit before translating it into English, does an abbreviated ceremony because the full Hindu wedding ceremony from the Rig Veda, a religious scripture dating back to 1500 B.C., can take four hours. Still, the ceremony lasts more than an hour and many of the 350 guests chat freely between rituals.

The wedding ceremony consists of about 10 mantras and rituals recited and conducted by the priest and the bride and groom as well as members of their families. Each element is rich with significance.

The bride and groom exchange garlands made of red roses and white carnations to signify that they accept each other as life partners. A knot tied between their clothing symbolizes the couple's union and Rachna steps on a stone to signify the strength of their relationship. A fire is built in a small cauldron and the couple adds rice and ghee, clarified butter, while circling the flames and praying for the god of fire to bless their marriage bond.

The saptapadi ritual involves the groom escorting the bride to take seven steps, each signifying a different aspect they hoped to have in their marriage — pleasures, energy, riches, overall well-being, progeny and seasons/longevity. The last step — friendship — legalizes the marriage.

"It's a very important step, so Rachna, think again," the priest teases as the smiling bride takes the final step.

"They are friends. They are equals," he declares. "It's very important, this equal partnership and friendship."

Chandola asks everyone to raise their hands in blessing and many toss rose petals at the couple. Women from both sides of the family whisper good wishes into the bride's ear and the newlyweds touch the feet of their elders, signifying their highest respect, and hug them.

"It was very beautiful," says Shuchee Shah, 16, cousin of the bride. "It was very simple but very grand at the same time. The day was perfect — everything went perfectly."

The theme of the reception, a modern addition to the traditional wedding festivities, is Pyar Dosti Hai (love is friendship). The signature martini, a blue concoction served from an ice bar on the patio of the JW Marriott Starr Pass Resort, is dubbed a "dostini."

Inside the Tucson Ballroom, sheer purple and blue fabric hangs from the ceiling, and centerpieces filled with petals top purple and blue tablecloths. The 378 guests are assigned to tables named either for a song by pop singer Mariah Carey or a movie with Bollywood star Shahrukh Khan.

"My sister is a little bit of a fan of Shahrukh Khan and Puneet is a big fan of Mariah Carey," Neema explains. "It's the people they loved before they met each other and focused on their one true love."

Grandparents, parents, sisters and the newlyweds are formally introduced at the beginning of the reception. The bride's parents receive a standing ovation.

"It takes a lot to do this and the Trivedis here put a lot of energy into it," says the groom's mother, who will hold a reception later this month in Chicago for family who couldn't make it to Tucson.

The newlyweds — Rachna in a deep purple custom-made chaniya choli and Puneet in a suit — enter to an explosion of sparklers.

The introductions, speeches, first dance and cake cutting are all projected onto two big screens on either side of the ballroom. During dessert — a small two-layer cake for each person — an animated video and slideshow of photos ranging from the couple's childhoods to their courtship plays on the screens.

Despite three long days of celebration, the couple enjoys every moment.

"I think it was a rousing success," says Rachna, who called the festivities "the more incredible days of my life."

"I haven't gotten any sleep, but it doesn't compare to seeing Rachna so happy," says her new husband.

The wedding was expensive, but the father of the bride has no regrets.

"Oh, yes, it's all been worth it," he says enthusiastically.

Later that night, the bride's parents present hand-wrapped gifts to each guest, a special dessert tray with Indian delectables — some flown in from India — is unveiled, and, of course, there is more joyous celebration. But before that, the DJ invites all of Rachna's and Puneet's relatives onto the dance floor.

"At an event like this, it's not just about the kids getting married. It's about the families getting married," says Rajeshree Shah, Rachna's cousin by marriage.

Rather than dance as couples, the large group impulsively grasps hands and forms a circle. In that large continuous ring, the two families swaying to the music become one.