Event planner Reena Maheshwari incorporated lotus and Queen of the Night flowers—which are Quynh-Huong Van’s namesake (quỳnh hương in Vietnamese)—into the design of her mehendi. The pattern was so intricate that the couple lost track of where Vikram Nagarajan’s name was woven into the design. Photo: Collette Rochell Photography
Woodbury’s Quynh-Huong Van and Plymouth’s Vikram Nagarajan enlisted the help of event planner Reena Maheshwari of Kahani Events & Design to help them plan their wedding ceremonies. “There were a lot of moving parts in terms of, ‘How do we honor both cultures on a very equitable level?’” Nagarajan says. “We really wanted someone who understood the very multicultural nature of the event.”
Maheshwari started Kahani Events & Design in 2019, but her experience with weddings dates back to her childhood. “My mom was the first henna artist in Minneapolis,” Maheshwari says. “Growing up, I had started doing henna with her for a lot of the Indian and South Asian weddings in Minnesota.” Her proximity to the wedding industry revealed a gap in the market for wedding planners who were versed in cultural nuances and had cultivated relationships with specialty vendors. Kahani Events & Design bridges that gap.
One of Maheshwari’s first questions for couples is what is important for them from both a cultural perspective and a personal perspective. “Having them describe what traditions that they might have grown up with or what traditions their families are expecting or just what their family expectations are overall all, all those different questions play into our conversation and getting to know what elements of their backgrounds they want to highlight,” she says.
