Harish Vemuri and PD Akita, who met at Harvard Law School, found a way to honor all of their families’ cultures and traditions — and their own wishes — when they married.
Little did Harish Srikar Vemuri and Princess Daisy Martekie Abla Akita know when they were attending Harvard Law School just a few years ago that the negotiating skills they acquired there would come in handy for wedding planning.
The couple, both 31 and now living in Santa Monica, Calif., found themselves not only dealing with their Indian and Ghanaian families and all their traditions and their own dietary needs, but also staying true to their own modern, egalitarian partnership.
“This past year has been a lesson in international diplomacy,” said Ms. Akita, who had her heart set on a beach ceremony.
Mr. Vemuri wanted a wedding in India so his grandparents could attend, while Ms. Akita’s parents wanted to host something in her native Ghana. But some of their close friends couldn’t travel to either place.
To make it all work, they ended up having four separate wedding ceremonies on three continents.
Mr. Vemuri and Ms. Akita, who goes by PD, started dating in their third year at Harvard Law, in 2019. In their first year, in 2017, Mr. Vemuri, recognized her on campus and sent her a friend request on Facebook. Ms. Akita accepted, though no further correspondence took place.
Mr. Vemuri remembers meeting Ms. Akita in 2013 in the Los Angeles office of Bain & Company, when she interned for a week during her sophomore year in college, and he was working there full time as an associate consultant. However, she had no recollection. “I thought he was making it up,” she said.
But apparently she had made such a good impression on him then, professionally speaking, that he told his colleagues they should hire her. She wanted to be in New York, though, where a former boyfriend had lived and where she had hoped to intern the following year.
One night in September 2019, Mr. Vemuri was hosting a few friends at his Cambridge, Mass., apartment for board games and dinner. When a guest said he’d like to make a quick appearance at a party nearby, Mr. Vemuri agreed to go, too, with a condition: if they wore funny hats.
He approached Ms. Akita, who was at that party, in a plush moose hat with antlers, and they struck up a conversation.
Mr. Vemuri, the older of two boys, was born in Cincinnati and raised in Portland, Ore., from the age of 6. His parents immigrated from the south Indian state of Andhra Pradesh to attend college in Ohio, and in 2021, they returned to India. He graduated from the University of Southern California magna cum laude before attending Harvard Law. He is now a senior manager at Bain & Company’s Los Angeles office.
Ms. Akita, raised mostly in Accra, Ghana, is the middle child between two brothers. At age 14, she attended boarding school, first in Ghana and then at the United World College-USA in New Mexico for two years. She graduated from Harvard College before attending Harvard Law, and is currently an engagement manager in McKinsey & Company’s Los Angeles office.
After the party, Ms. Akita asked Mr. Vemuri to lunch. At the time, it seemed to him a gesture to make up for not remembering him. But Ms. Akita said it wasn’t.
“That was me being very forward,” she said. “He was very easy to talk to, and he’d also worked in Ghana. We had similar professional backgrounds. And he was very cute.”
Over Beyond Burgers at the Harvard Law School cafeteria, their conversation about factory-farmed meat and meat alternatives lasted hours.
“It’s normal that first date conversation at Harvard is about career ambition,” Mr. Vemuri said. While Ms. Akita’s ambition was impossible to ignore, he also appreciated her interest in vegetarianism, given that it was so foreign to her.
Several hours later, both realized they had missed class.
When they left the cafeteria, it was pounding rain. Ms. Akita lived a 20-minute walk away, while Mr. Vemuri lived across the street from the cafeteria. They ran to his place, where he offered her an umbrella. Even though every law student has multitudes of umbrellas, as branded ones are common gifts from recruiting law firms, she was touched when he told her to keep it.
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On what they consider their first official date, in October, they went to Backbar in Somerville’s Union Square, after which they shared their first kiss.
For their next date, Mr. Vemuri suggested ax throwing; Ms. Akita countered with a shooting range. Even though they support gun-control reform, and of the two of them, Ms. Akita was the newbie, her first shot was a bull's-eye.
“With PD, all things are possible,” Mr. Vemuri said. “Even when she gets dejected, her heart is so big and her capacity so large, that I know we can survive to get anything done together.”
Mr. Vemuri had never spoken to his parents about his dating life, mostly because there wasn’t a lot to speak of. They assumed he would involve them in finding him a suitable wife. After dating Ms. Akita, he thought she might be worth “upending tradition for,” he said.
When he told them about Ms. Akita, he said, “It was a huge shock.” They didn’t expect he would buck tradition.
Given that Ms. Akita had been living abroad for so many years, she said her parents didn’t have similar expectations.
However, she was the one who first broached their cultural differences.
“It was a core concern of mine from the very beginning,” she said. “The fact that our families and upbringings were so different, I didn’t see how we could do this seamlessly. A regular marriage has so many challenges, and with us, we’re layering on social and religious and racial challenges. I needed to know ‘Are you going to fight for us?’”
By his words and his actions, he assured her that he would.
“Harish is kind and strong and gentle,” Ms. Akita said. “I know that I’ll have him in my corner for the rest of my life, and that is such a gift.”
Because of the pandemic they ended up spending their final months of law school, as well as graduation, at Mr. Vemuri’s childhood home in Portland, in separate bedrooms. They also studied there for the California bar exam, and campaigned for Joseph R. Biden Jr. Their lives were interrupted in July 2020, when Ms. Akita needed fibroid surgery. In January 2021, they moved to Santa Monica.
In February 2022, they proposed to each other during a weekend getaway in Sonoma County, to which many of their close friends were also invited. As perhaps a foreshadowing of their wedding, they asked each other three times: in a Sonoma County redwood forest, on the beach at Bodega Bay, and in their apartment. Rather than rings, they exchanged two-stranded rope necklaces. They then flipped a coin to determine whose last name would come first in their future children’s joint last name. (Mr. Vemuri won.)
They were legally married Oct. 22, 2022 at El Matador State Beach in Malibu, Calif. Patricia Ann Yim Cowett, a former judge of the San Diego County Superior Court who is also a friend and neighbor of the couple, officiated.
On Dec. 8, they had a wedding ceremony performed before 100 guests by friends of the Akita family, Abigail Mensah, representing the Vemuri family, and Susuana Anang, representing the Akita family, at Peduase Valley Resort, a resort town north of Accra, Ghana. Ms. Akita’s request for a vegetarian wedding was honored, despite it being far from the norm there. There was also a Ghanaian ritual, with women relatives of the bride assessing the dowry and then presenting their findings to the men, who decide if the wedding can go forward.
“Removing that, is, in effect, not having a Ghanaian wedding,” Ms. Akita said, “and it was important to my parents that we honor where I come from.”
Though in a more egalitarian form of a traditional Ghanaian ritual, her parents presented cookware to the couple, rather than just the bride.
Then, on Dec. 18, Konduri Venkata Ramayya, a Hindu priest, performed a Hindu ceremony in front of 252 guests at SunRay Village Resort in Visakhapatnam, India, with a vegan reception.
Over three days, they also took part in the traditional religious ceremony known as a puja, a turmeric ceremony known as the haldi, the dance party known as the sangeet, a mendhi party, where henna is applied to the bride and her wedding party, and the baharaat, or pre-wedding procession in the street, though no horse for the groom or bride, as no captive animals would be used at his wedding.
“We felt this pressure to deliver the whole Indian wedding experience for our guests and friends who flew across the world,” Mr. Vemuri said.
And in an American-style ceremony on the third day in India, at SunRay Beachfront, Mr. Vemuri sang Elvis Presley’s “Can’t Help Falling in Love” to Ms. Akita when she walked down the aisle, when the wedding singer fell ill.
This final ceremony was officiated by an aunt from each side, Sarada Vithala and Cecilia Morkor Akita.
Why yet a fourth ceremony in India? Because none of the three thus far had satisfied Ms. Akita’s wish for an American-style beachfront wedding in front of all their friends and family, not just a handful as had happened in Malibu.
There were times this past year that the couple questioned their decision to have a three-continent wedding, especially while both were up for promotions at work.
But they said it was worth it if it meant giving their families and friends a cross-cultural experience.
“For our next project, rather than being about us,” Mr. Vemuri said, “I’d rather it be about making the world a better place somehow.”
On This Day
When Oct. 22, 2022
Where El Matador State Beach, Malibu, Calif.
Short and Sweet In a brief ceremony, with five close friends as witnesses, Mr. Vemuri and Ms. Akita exchanged vows. The groom promised the bride “to be as fun-loving as you are driven.”
Minimalist Reception The couple celebrated afterward with brunch at Gracias Madre West Hollywood, a vegan and organic Mexican restaurant.
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