{"id":14568,"date":"2016-06-02T16:35:47","date_gmt":"2016-06-02T15:35:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/?p=14568"},"modified":"2016-06-02T16:35:47","modified_gmt":"2016-06-02T15:35:47","slug":"grand-gay-indian-wedding","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/2016\/06\/02\/grand-gay-indian-wedding\/","title":{"rendered":"Grand Gay Indian Wedding"},"content":{"rendered":"

Despite the taboo of being gay in traditional Indian families and homosexuality being illegal in India, Rishi Agarwal and Daniel Langdon tied the knot in a very traditional ceremony.<\/p>\n

Mr Agarwal was brought up in a very traditional Hindu household and his parents had dreamed of throwing a huge wedding for their son, alongside Rishi himself sharing his parents vision.<\/p>\n

The family relocated from India to Canada in the 1970s however their mindset stayed the same.<\/p>\n

Rishi spoke about a gay Sikh student who committed suicide after his parents refused to accept his sexual orientation, and dreaded that he would never have his dream wedding with his family and friends.<\/p>\n

After he told his parents about his sexuality, Vijay and Sushma Agarwal were both stunned, obviously not expecting this.<\/p>\n

Nonetheless, despite Rishi\u2019s worst fears, his parents accepted him with open arms and an open mind, after spending three days learning about LGBT issues.<\/p>\n

When he asked if they wanted him to leave their home, his parents said: \u201cYou\u2019re still out son and we love you\u201d.<\/p>\n

They added that they blamed their own ignorance. His mother, Sushma said: \u201cThis is strictly our baggage, what we bring from India.\u201d<\/p>\n

So Rishi finally married Dan, after they met in 2011, performing all of the cultural traditions of a Hindu wedding, surrounded by loved ones, making all of their dreams come true.<\/p>\n

\"Rishi<\/a>
Rishi & Dan at their wedding with parents, Vijay and Sushma.
CREDIT: Sukhbir Channa Photography<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

On his big day, Rishi proclaimed: \u201cI never thought in my wildest dreams that I could have the wedding that I wanted with the person I loved and with all my family and my friends.\u201d<\/p>\n

The couple wanted to share their story to display how important acceptance is and how families can unite to celebrate a gay wedding just as they would any other couple.<\/p>\n

Rishi said: \u201cIn order to run a lot of those ceremonies, you really need everyone, the community\u2019s involvement, otherwise it doesn\u2019t really work.\u201d<\/p>\n

He added: \u201cUnfortunately, others have not had that support in their lives.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Rishi<\/a>
Rishi and Dan.
CREDIT: Sukhbir Channa Photography<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Despite the taboo of being gay in traditional Indian families and homosexuality being illegal in India, Rishi Agarwal and Daniel Langdon tied the knot in a very traditional ceremony. Mr Agarwal was brought up in a very traditional Hindu household and his parents had dreamed of throwing a huge wedding for their son, alongside Rishi […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":14571,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39,43,112],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14568","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international-news","category-lifestyle","category-top-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14568","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14568"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14568\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14571"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14568"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14568"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14568"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}