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Two Cultures, Two Dresses: Michelle Khare's Search for a Wedding Gown

Michelle Khare · ▶ 15:25 · 8 min read
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Overview

Michelle Khare framed her wedding dress search as a chance to return a favor. Her partner Garrett had proposed to her a few years earlier "in a very extravagant and unexpected way," and since he would not see the dress until the wedding day, she saw the gown as her opportunity to surprise him back. She recruited friends and family, including her mother Laura, to help.

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Her goal from the start was specific. Michelle is mixed race, with Indian and white Western family backgrounds, and she wanted to combine the traditional Western white wedding dress with the traditional Indian bridal lehenga. She hoped to find "the perfect midpoint of the two" to honor both sides of her family. Over roughly a year and around 100 gowns, she kept looking for that hybrid dress. In the end she gave up on it and chose a different solution.

0:32

Starting Point: A White Lehenga

Michelle began at an Indian bridal designer. She brought reference photos and mentioned a music video in which she had worn several Indian bridal gowns. Her favorite from that shoot was a two-piece, open-back outfit in off-white with beading and traditional gold work. The store had a newly arrived piece ready for her, also on an off-white base with heavy embellishment.

Michelle explained the garment in the video. A traditional lehenga has three parts:

  • the lehenga, a long embroidered skirt
  • the choli, a midriff-baring blouse cut to fit closely
  • the dupatta, a pleated shawl that can be worn several ways, including as a veil

Indian bridal lehengas are traditionally red, which she said represents new beginnings, love, passion and prosperity. She was trying on white versions as her way of bringing in the Western style.

Her mother hoped mainly that Michelle would look gorgeous. Michelle found it strange to see herself in a wedding dress. She noted that the first outfit "seem[ed] to check all the boxes," yet she wasn't wowed by it. She tested a lighter outfit for ease of movement with a short dance. She compared fabrics and said she preferred organza and kept coming back to sparkle.

A staff member at the shop described the pressure brides feel. Most of the brides they work with are "pretty stressed out," because they won't settle for something merely nice. They want the perfect outfit, and that raises the stakes. Michelle's favorite of the day was an organza piece whose color and embroidery she loved. She said it felt like the midpoint between Western and Indian, but she "still wasn't fully sold."

4:45

Lovella Bridal: The Value of Wildcards

Next she went to Lovella Bridal, a more traditionally Western shop. A representative said it has over 6,000 square feet of space and stocks many designers, so brides travel from far away to see everything in one place.

The first dress she tried there was nothing like what she had imagined. She loved that it was fitted at the waist and hugged her body, and her companions praised how well she carried sparkle. The group disliked the high collar, which they described as heavy and somewhat Victorian. Her mother raised the October weather and whether Michelle might get cold. Michelle replied that she cared more about how she would look.

A consultant at the shop told her that brides often pick the complete opposite of what they came in asking for. She estimated that only about one in ten brides buys the dress she originally expected to want. Hearing this, Michelle decided to try some wildcard dresses as well.

By the end of the first day she had a list of preferences from both sides. From the Western shops, she liked a fitted mermaid silhouette, a deep V neckline and classic white. From the Indian designers, she liked the multi-piece lehenga structure, and from both she liked sparkle. She still had not found the dress.

7:00

A Year and About 100 Gowns

Michelle did not stop to reflect on what she had learned. She said she "channel[ed] [her] inner Leo" and decided that more was better. Over the next year she tried on an estimated 100 bridal gowns. The pandemic kept pushing back the wedding date, which she said gave her plenty of time to think, procrastinate and backtrack.

The montage from this stretch shows her growing fatigue. One dress gave "nightgown vibes," another seemed "haunting," and she admitted the options were starting to blend together. When a friend asked whether she was indecisive, she joked that Garrett was usually helpful with decisions, but he wasn't there. Asked whether she had felt any strong, near-spiritual reaction yet, she said no, though she thought she was getting closer.

Even so, after about 100 gowns she said she felt no closer to the perfect midpoint dress. In hindsight, she put this down to how firmly she was committed to finding a hybrid, white, Indian-inspired gown.

9:02

Shyamal & Bhumika: Rethinking Red

The turning point came at Shyamal & Bhumika, which she described as a very traditional Indian lehenga store known for brilliant designs and colors. There she found herself liking heavy embroidery far more than she expected. For the first time she seriously considered a traditional red dress.

She found it strange to see herself in red, in a dress similar to the one her mother wore at her own wedding. She wondered aloud whether she should wear white or red. When she asked whether the red design would work in white, her companion said it would be a completely different effect: white is meant to be humble and pure, while the red was about power. Michelle said she liked looking powerful. She also called the moment emotional, because it connected her to her dadima (grandmother) and to her mother. Her mother remarked on the resemblance.

Michelle then described what the moment meant to her as a mixed-race person. She said she had "consistently existed in a strange liminal space" between her family's two cultures: "not white enough to be considered white and not Indian enough to be fully Indian." Wearing traditional red, she said, made her feel part of something she had always stood awkwardly on the outskirts of.

11:00

The New Plan: One Dress for Each Culture

Her mother had held two separate weddings, one to bring in her husband's culture and one for her own. Michelle did not want two full ceremonies. Instead she looked into the modern trend of brides wearing two outfits, one for the ceremony and one for the reception. The second outfit is usually more casual or easier to dance in.

Michelle's version was different. She would wear a white Western gown for the ceremony. Then, as a complete surprise to the guests, she would reveal a fully embellished red Indian lehenga for the reception. In her words, this would let her honor each side of her family and give each culture "the space to shine individually." She contrasted this with forcing the two cultures into one, which she said she felt she had done her whole life.

11:59

Final Decisions

About a year and a half after her first visits, she went back to the same stores to decide. For the lehenga, she had loved the color of the last red dress but wanted a different cut. She found what she believed was the right dress, but the sample was purple. Watching it, her companions said things like "this is gonna be the dress" and "it's tough to beat." They also noted that it could be paired with jewelry for even more sparkle. Michelle video-called her mother, warned her that it was purple, and asked her to imagine it in red. Her mother called it beautiful and classic, said Michelle looked like "a legit princess," and predicted that Garrett would "lose it."

That meant doing something Michelle never expected: ordering a dress without seeing it in its final color. She said she was "incredibly nervous" about whether it would turn out well with all the modifications, especially the color change. She decided to trust the choice. The dress was due to arrive months later.

The Western gown came together quickly once she stopped trying to make it a hybrid. Freed to explore the classic white Western style, she said she "quickly zeroed in" on what she wanted. The video shows her and her companions screaming over a very sparkly gown, without spelling out the details.

The video ends before the wedding. Both dresses are chosen, one of them still unseen in its final color. What remains is the wedding day itself, when Michelle plans to surprise Garrett with two dresses instead of one.

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