Blessed is the one… | A wedding testimony

Around August 2021, after many struggles and obstacles (which is a testimony for another time), my fiancé and I finally started planning our wedding. We had no idea how to go about it. We didn’t even have a clue about what we wanted. Little did we know that our Father in heaven had already decided what He wanted to see in the wedding of His children. God was excited about the wedding. He had already planned it.

We decided to ask Him what He wanted.

Months before this, when my then fiancé, Prema, had fasted and prayed about our relationship, she had felt in her heart that God was pointing us to the following Scripture –

But blessed is the one who trusts in the Lord,
    whose confidence is in him.
They will be like a tree planted by the water
    that sends out its roots by the stream.
It does not fear when heat comes;
    its leaves are always green.
It has no worries in a year of drought
    and never fails to bear fruit.”
– Jeremiah 17:7-8

We prayed and decided that we’d trust in the LORD, and put our confidence in Him.

We started committing every single decision to Him. The first thing we needed to decide were the theme colors for the wedding. I love blue, so that’s what I suggested. But Prema, while scrolling randomly through Pinterest, came across a beautiful shade of green that I fell in love with too.

But before I said yes, Prema decided to google the Biblical meaning of the color green. And here’s where that led us.

Oh yes. The same verse that would also become the theme verse of our wedding. The color was fixed now. God had decided, and we just had to agree, very happily.

Next came the choice of venues.

One morning, Prema sent me the link to an Instagram page of a place called Farmhouse Social that she thought was quite pretty. I took one look at the place and said, “absolutely not!” It was 30km away from my house. There was no way it would work for my family.

So we decided to check out another venue, with Prema’s uncle. We went there, took a good look at the place, and although the place was beautiful, somehow, our hearts weren’t content. Immediately, we held each other’s hands and shot a prayer up to heaven, asking God to reveal His will to us.

As we sat down for coffee with Prema’s uncle, he took out his phone and said, “if you don’t like this place, I have another one in mind. Take a look.”

He showed us the place on his phone – the same place that Prema had fallen in love with earlier that morning – Farmhouse Social.

As I rode home, a dear friend of ours, Elizabeth Peter, messaged us, “Hey, I came across this lovely venue, if you’re still venue hunting.”

What was the venue? Farmhouse Social!

Two days later, another friend reached out suggesting the same place.

It wouldn’t have taken a lot more convincing, but it seemed like God wasn’t done.

The next day, we found out that the venue was owned by our Maid of Honor’s cousin. The kicker for me was that the owner’s father had subscribed to Awe & Wonder and read our blogs regularly (hey Uncle, if you’re reading this right now, thank you for blessing us.)

Did I mention that the place was super green?

Venue – check.

Over the next few weeks, we constantly sought God in every little choice that had to be made.

We went shopping, bought our clothes, booked the nicest decorator (Shilka Abraham), a highly experienced caterer, and things went as smoothly as they could, with both Prema and I having the appropriate amount of stress levels that can be expected of a bride and groom.

But then came a hurdle – rings.

We just couldn’t get the right sizes anywhere. Either we’d get only mine, or we’d get only Prema’s size, but never both. I know it doesn’t sound like a big deal, but for some reason, I was sure that I wanted to get both our rings from the same place.

We went through a lot of Jewellery stores with no success.

Until my sister remembered a friend, Paul Antony, and Alice Jewellers. We decided to give it a shot.

We called him up, went to the store, and guess what – found the rings that fit us within 5 minutes.

Only months later did we realize what a man of prayer Paul Antony is, and he got to share some beautiful stories of his own with us.

But that’s not the amazing part!

Remember how I said that our theme verse was Jeremiah 17:7-8?

17. 7-8.

We finally found out our ring sizes at that store.

Mine is 17. Prema’s is between 7 & 8.

Yup! There’s no such thing as a coincidence when God is involved.

As the wedding day drew nearer, it seemed that our planning was coming to an end.

Almost everything was decided. The layout of the tables, the decorations, the transport for guests, the three different areas of the venue for the three different occasions.

But God has a way of throwing curveballs. A few days before the wedding, a cyclone hit the city of Chennai, and that began to affect the weather in Bangalore.

It poured continuously, throughout the day and night for a couple of days, including the day before the wedding.

The ground at the venue was wet and slushy. All our planning seemed to be useless.

As I stared at the carefully planned spreadsheets that I had made, realizing that the planned schedule was crumbling, that all the planning had been pointless, I got a call from my best man, Luke, and our dearest spiritual mentor, Aneela. They, along with Rahel (Prema’s maid of honor) had rushed to the venue early that morning to meet our decorator, Shilka (who did a fabulous job, by the way) to see what could be done.

It took Prema and I two months to plan a wedding. It took these people an hour to redesign it.

Everything was moved to a small hall, and though it wasn’t our plan A, it seemed to be what God wanted.

The guests arrived in the afternoon, and so did Prema and I. We started with worship, and it continued to drizzle as we did. I prayed for the rain to stop, but this was one prayer that was not going to be answered that day, apparently for a reason.

Uday Rao, our dear pastor, gave the message from the wedding verse, Jeremiah 17:7-8.

‘But blessed is the one who trusts in the Lord,
    whose confidence is in him.
They will be like a tree planted by the water
    that sends out its roots by the stream.’

Like a tree planted by the water.

As I continued to stare at the rain falling outside the window, wishing for it to stop, Uday explained how water was generally a symbol of blessing in the Bible. It was water that caused the trees to grow. It was water that made way for the new. Even in Noah’s day, it was water that provided a fresh start for God’s people. And God knew we needed a fresh start.

It was water that made way for God to enter into a covenant with man.

And it was water that marked the day when Prema and I entered into a covenant with God and each other.

We worshipped with all our hearts, and when it was time to bless us, the desires of our hearts truly came true.

The people that came forward to bless us, and the things they said – I would’ve never believed it could’ve happened if you’d told me even a day earlier.

Something had shifted. Indeed, it was a fresh start.

The rest of the day was pretty awesome. Our friends put on the best performances and we laughed our hearts out.

Day 2 – The Wedding

The next day was the actual wedding. The skies were still cloudy and it continued to drizzle.

I must admit, I was a bit disappointed and even a little resentful. I wanted an outdoor wedding, and the beauty of the venue seemed to be going to waste because of these rains.

The rain also made the traffic unbearable, due to which a lot of people were late.

But the ceremony went on quite beautifully. The choir was an absolute treat. There was a funny, yet profound incident with the lighting of the unity candle, but that’s a story for another time.

When the ceremony had ended, the rain only got worse, and so did the traffic. We got to the reception venue (Farmhouse Social) as soon as we could but it looked like it would take a while for all the guests to get there.

So we headed to a little room and hung out with the bridal party, with Shilka and Aneela.

I was still a little disappointed because I kept thinking of all the guests crammed into a hall when the initial plan was to have the wedding outside.

The photographer got stuck in terrible traffic, so we had quite some time to kill.

I decided to take a walk outside. I walked to the area where our wedding was supposed to be and I shot up a quick prayer. I went back and told the others that I really wanted the celebration to take place outside.

We knew that it wasn’t possible in the rain, so we just decided to leave it to God. We walked outside together, stood at the place where I’d been, and Aneela prayed.

The rain stopped.

Not dramatically, not in a crazy parting-of-the-red-sea fashion, but it just stopped. I don’t know how else to explain it.

Luke ran and spoke to my family, and in ten minutes, the party moved outside.

Our prayer had been answered. Many prayers had been answered.

It was only later on that many people came to us and said that the rain made the floor look like a giant mirror, and that it made the pictures look so much better.

Right after our toasts, Prema and I were able to share the Gospel with everyone. Every single obstacle, every hurdle, every tear cried – it had all been worth it.

We realized that God is truly a Father, who delights in His children. All we had to do was ask Him, and He was willing to give us the best.

And I realized that one of those ‘best’ came in the form of community. People who owed us nothing – who came together and went above and beyond to lavish extravagant love on us.

We truly believe that marriage between a man and a woman is meant to reflect God’s relationship with His Church, and we want to do everything we can to honor that.

So, God willing, that’s exactly what we will spend the rest of our lives doing.

I hope this testimony blesses you. I hope that as you read this, you remember that God is in absolute control. He wants to be involved in the big things and little things. All you have to do is ask Him. All you have to do is seek Him. All you have to do is knock.

And you will receive. You will find. The door will be opened.

But blessed is the one who trusts in the Lord,
    whose confidence is in him.
They will be like a tree planted by the water
    that sends out its roots by the stream.
It does not fear when heat comes;
    its leaves are always green.
It has no worries in a year of drought
    and never fails to bear fruit.”
– Jeremiah 17:7-8