For Better or for Worse

Congratulations are in order for the momentous occasion of the wedding of my little sister, Dr. Theresa Tharakan, to Dr. Selby Chu. This was a special weekend for Theresa, as she got married not once but twice.

First, a priest led a full Catholic Mass at the Cathedral Basilica of St. Louis on Friday, May 12. The ceremony was very traditional, with the inclusion of thali and manthrakodi, an Indian Christian custom in which the groom ties a gold necklace thali around the neck of his wife and the first wedding gift he gives her the manthrakodi, an elaborate red and gold piece of cloth worn around the head to symbolize their union.

Second, the groom’s brother, Selwyn Chu, led a May 13 ceremony with romantic, self-written vows at Missouri Botanical Gardens. The venue was moved from indoors to the Bayer Event Center because of the thunderstorm advisory, but Theresa, Selby, and their wedding party got some excellent photographs by carrying umbrellas and hiking to the Japanese Garden during a sunny interlude.

I split maid of honor duties with Theresa’s best friend, Sushi Subburamu. In preparation for the wedding, we threw a bridal shower and deluged Theresa with feminine gifts at an East Village Ethiopian restaurant called Awash this past December. Sushi also hosted a bachelorette weekend in Miami.

I lent Theresa my Marian medal, bought from St. Patrick’s Cathedral gift shop and blessed by a priest, as her something borrowed and something blue. She got black vanilla body lotion as her something new. Finally, her something old was a pearl bracelet.

As a wedding gift, I set up an audio keepsake for Theresa and asked everyone on the guest list to call in to a phone line with voice messages that included a piece of marital advice for the happy couple. I made sure to solicit advice not just from happily married guests but also from single ones. But getting the majority of folks to participate was a daunting challenge because I had to verbally ask people to call in.

Theresa wore two fancy white dresses at the wedding and a red lehenga at the reception. She and Selby did a dance performance for the guests, where they showed off their moves.

Theresa also had my mom, my brother, and me make speeches Friday and Saturday evening. I delivered my speech last night, but slipped up a couple of times when I forgot the next line because I didn’t bring up a card or piece of paper with me. I figured the dramatic optics of a memorized speech was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to celebrate a wedding. Here is the full text of my remarks:

When I was 7 years old, I was an only child and a lonely soul. I had no one to play with so I asked my parents for a sibling. When Theresa came home from the hospital as a newborn, I was so excited that I wrote her a letter which to this day is still attached to my mom’s cubby at work. “Dear Theresa, I love you very much. You are very laughative. Love, Chechi.” Chechi is what she and Joey call me, which means older sister in the Malayalam dialect.

This dialect was something we learned from our late father, who enjoyed teasing Theresa and carrying her around. Daddy asked why she couldn’t ask our Mother to carry her around, and she said “You’re stronger!”

Theresa was always very sociable and outgoing, and she loved inviting friends over from Bronx Science, Harvard, and Einstein to practice ballroom dancing. She loved traveling to far off lands to visit these friends, sample ethnic cuisines, and to take photographs of the places she saw and the people she met.

It is hard to believe that a free spirit like Theresa is now settling down with Selby and getting married. But Selby is the perfect person to lead her into domestic and marital bliss, as he is a ninja in the kitchen and good with kids, being a pediatrician. But I’m hoping that they’ll have adventures together as husband and wife. In the words of Winnie the Pooh, “As soon as I saw you I knew that a grand adventure was going to happen.”