Ishan and Vandana’s eco-friendly Vegan wedding in Lonavala

Aren’t Vegan couples just the best? What’s even better than that is when they decide to get married and have a lovely eco-friendly plant-based wedding! 

It really helps the subject of veganism to grow when it's expressed in a joyous occasion such as a wedding or a birthday.

This one is about Ishan and Vandana's love story.

Ishan and Vandana are two loving vegans who are Life Sciences researchers specializing in Protein Crystallography, a sub-field where the study and understand the Structure of Protein. They are nearing the end of their PhD program at IIT-Bombay.

How they met

Ishan and Vandana both first met each other while pursuing their PhD’s in Life Sciences at IIT- Bombay. They met in the year 2014 and were quite the opposites in the beginning who used to tease and pull each other’s leg a lot.

Ishan and Vandana

“Our friends also realized that the two of us had very different personalities, with Vandana being jovial and fun-loving and me being the serious one. But eventually, over time, we found out that we did indeed have a lot in common, like our love for nature, animals and research.” - Ishan

Their Vegan journey!

It all began when the couple had huge concerns about the environmental damage that humans do and how cruel we are towards animals. However, Ishan was still a vegetarian back then who then realized the hypocrisy of using leather, consuming dairy and still talking about the environment and animal cruelty. He then went vegan.

This was about 2 and half years back and convinced Vandana and his parents to go vegan about a year ago. After Vandana and his parents went vegan, they had no doubts that their wedding would be a vegan one.

Union of families

“Few vegan weddings in India have already inspired us in recent years. Our respective families agreed and we were the happiest people on Earth when they did.” - Vandana

How did they manage the Vegan food?

It was a journey full of experimentation where they tried and tested with different vegan recipes and created some new ones. They wanted to have food similar to or better than their traditional non-vegan counterparts and break people’s skepticism about the taste of vegan food.

Vegan Dahi Vada

Many people were under the impression that having a vegan wedding means having to miss out on things you get to enjoy in a regular wedding.  As they were both in the final years of their PhD. and overloaded with their research tasks, their parents took the initiative of designing and creating the vegan menu.

Imarti

With their newly found interest in creating dairy-free dishes, they had experimented with veganizing tea, sweets, and other vegan dishes.

Vegan Srikhand

The wedding had to happen at Lonavala, they took multiple trips to finalize the caterers and made him understand and convinced them to create a vegan feast.

Dairy-free Malai Kofta

Since the wedding function involved several days and hence multiple meals, they wanted to create a diversity in the menu and delivered it with great flavour. One of their goals was to convince others that being vegan does not mean one has to compromise on taste for our ethics.

Shahi Tofu

They had a selection of sweets (halwas, shrikhand, kaju katli, jalebi, fruit custard, ice cream) and other veganized items (Dahi vada, tofu gravy, Kadhi etc.).

Vegan Badam Halwa

They were also able to prepare tea with cashew and almond milk, which was costed just the same to make as dairy-milk tea and was appreciated by the people. They had put up vegan stickers on the food items to promote veganism.

Tawa Veg

“The sourcing of the dairy alternatives was important, and Chetran’s supplied us with soy milk, soy curd, Srikhand, Amrakhand, Tofu, soy spreads, we also got vegan butter from Hearth&Heart.” - Ishan

Changing Traditions

As traditional ceremonies need ghee, honey, milk, and curd as ingredients, so they arranged vegan substitutes for all of them.

To save paper they didn’t print wedding cards and invited guests via Whatsapp and email. They did not want guests to bring any gifts, as didn’t want to have things which they didn't require. Also, they didn’t want other guests to gift them leather, silk, pearls, or any non-vegan items. Therefore, they had explicitly mentioned in their wedding cards to not bring any gifts and bouquets.

“We used reusable artificial flowers for the garlands and decoration purposes and kept the use of natural flowers to the minimum. “ - Ishan 

“We used cold pressed coconut oil was used to make vegan ghee, maple syrup, soy milk, and soy curd were used.” - Vandana

The long and wonderful life ahead

Ishan and Vandana had both dreamt of celebrating their togetherness without promoting and taking part in animal cruelty and they successfully accomplished that with the dedication, love, and support of their friends and families.

“Though initially apprehensive, our extended family and friends appreciated the idea of the vegan wedding from food, to rituals, and the decoration. We are happy that we were able to spread the message of compassion, love, and ethics by not supporting animal cruelty and will inspire others to GO VEGAN.” – Ishan

Like this?

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