Real Weddings: Sonu and Parinaz

Parinaz Bhesania, a 28-year-old head of sales, first met Sonu Chakraborty, a 28-year-old software engineer, at their North York junior high school in 2010. They became friends before a will-they-or-won’t-they high school romance turned into long-lasting love. Their relationship grew as Sonu went off to university and Parinaz built her career. In 2020, after four years as a couple, they moved in together. Later that year, they got their first, a poodle mix named Oreo. Another poodle mix, Aero, followed in 2022. Sonu and Parinaz say they treat their dogs like children. In September of 2023, Sonu proposed, and the couple married in July of 2025 with a five-day celebration featuring their two dressed-up pups. Here’s how it all came together.

Sonu: Parinaz and I have known each other for a long time. We started going to the same junior high school in 2010, but we were in different classes. We started having classes together when we went to A. Y. Jackson, in North York, but we weren’t that close. We didn’t see each other outside of class.

Parinaz: In the summer of Grade 11, Sonu and I took the same English summer school class. There were a bunch of students from the surrounding high schools enrolled, and Sonu was the only person I knew, so we gravitated toward each other. We started getting meals after school and spending more time together. Sonu became my best friend. It always felt platonic to me.

Sonu: That summer, I started to catch feelings for Parinaz. As I got to know her better, I loved how she saw the world. She was a very passionate, motivated and outgoing person. It also helped that she was absolutely beautiful. In the middle of summer, I told her that I had feelings for her.

Parinaz: Sonu and I were close, but I didn’t feel ready for a relationship. I told him I saw us as only friends, and he took it well.

Sonu: Surprisingly, it didn’t make things awkward or weird. We went back to being best friends. Parinaz was excited to hear about my new crushes.

Parinaz: I’ll be honest—hearing him talk about other girls made me think, That could have been me. I started to see Sonu in a new light. He was such an honest person, and he always felt like a safe place. In November of 2015, I told him how I felt. But he said that he didn’t feel that way anymore. I didn’t handle the rejection as well as Sonu had, and we went from hanging out every day to once every couple of weeks.

Sonu: Over the next few months, I came to the slow, steady realization that if I didn’t make a move, I was going to lose the chance to be with her. We were graduating in a few months, and it seemed like our lives would go in different directions.

Parinaz: On February 15, 2016, the day after Valentine’s Day, Sonu asked if I could meet him in the parking lot of our old junior high school. When I got there, he pulled me in for a kiss. I was so happy. I felt butterflies in my stomach.

Sonu: Our friends weren’t all that surprised. They said they had been expecting it for up to a year. They were happy for us. After we graduated, I went to U of T Scarborough, then to Seneca for computer programming.

Parinaz: I had a knack for sales and turned my part-time job selling subscriptions door-to-door for the Toronto Star into a full-time career. I met Sonu’s mom one month into dating him. His dad is more strict about dating, so I met him six months later. Sonu met my parents after we had been dating for a year. We went on our first trip together, to Manitoulin Island, in July of 2017.

Sonu: My parents really liked Parinaz, so it was easy to have her over at our place to spend time together.

Parinaz: Our early days of dating were a bit of a balancing act. Between my drive to get ahead in my career and Sonu’s intense focus on school, it was challenging to find time to be together. It was almost ironic—our parents’ homes were just five minutes apart, yet our schedules were so demanding that we’d often go a week or two without seeing each other.

Sonu: We were focused on saving up enough money to rent our own place. By September of 2020, we felt like we were in a good financial situation, so Parinaz and I moved out of our parents’ homes and rented our first apartment together—a one-bedroom at Yonge and Eglinton.

Parinaz: You hear so many stories about the adjustment period of living together, but for us it was easy. Our biggest hurdle was our mismatched schedules. My office was over an hour away, and I was often gone for 14 hours at a time. Sonu was my hero, taking care of nearly everything at home, from meals to cleaning. I never had to worry about what was happening at home because I knew he had it handled.

Sonu: A month into living together, we got our first dog—Oreo—a poodle–cocker spaniel mix. I love dogs and had wanted one since I was a kid.

Parinaz: I wasn’t as convinced, but I was out of the house a lot for work, and I knew Sonu was getting lonely. After we brought Oreo home, everything changed. Now I’m more of a pet lover than he is. We got our second dog, Aero, a Maltese-poodle mix, in January of 2022. Our dogs are everything to us. Oreo is incredibly loyal and calm, while Aero is the total opposite, energetic with no fear. The two of them love playing together.

Sonu: In May of 2023, Parinaz and I bought our first house, in Odessa, 20 minutes west of Kingston. I was working remotely, and Parinaz had just switched to a remote position, so we looked outside of the city to find something bigger for our budget. It was our dream home: a brand new three-bedroom semi-detached with a big backyard for the dogs.

Parinaz: Sonu and I had already talked about getting married, but we knew we wanted to buy a house first. We’d been dating for seven years by this point, and our parents all thought we were never going to get married.

Sonu: I can’t recall any specific moment when I realized I wanted to spend my life with Parinaz. It was more of a culmination of everything she does for me, which made me realize she was the one. I loved seeing what a great dog mom she was to Aero and Oreo. Once we bought the house, I started planning the proposal. Parinaz and I usually go on one vacation a year, and we love going to all-inclusive resorts. We decided on Jamaica and booked a trip for September of 2023. A month before we left, I picked out a ring with a diamond encircled by a halo of smaller diamonds, which I knew Parinaz would love.

Parinaz: I should have clued in when Sonu picked an upgraded room—we usually just choose the basic option.

Sonu: Once we arrived at the resort, we walked around the property together and came across a small secluded beach. It faced west, so I knew it would have a view of the sunset. Three days later, I brought Parinaz back under the guise of wanting to take pictures on the beach at sunset. I propped up my phone on a nearby table and set it to record a video.

Parinaz: I kept trying to walk out into the water, which probably stressed Sonu out. When he finally got down on one knee and pulled out the ring, I was surprised and shocked.

Sonu: I was confident that Parinaz would say yes, but I was also incredibly nervous about keeping it a secret from her. I wanted to make sure she was genuinely surprised so that it would be as special as possible. I was scared I would miss the moment because Parinaz was more interested in going for a swim, but luckily I managed to get her into the right spot, then I finally proposed.

Parinaz: I had no idea. Of course I said yes. I was so, so excited.

Sonu: We knew we wanted to have all the elements of an Indian wedding plus a Western wedding. That meant five events in five days: an Indian ceremony called a Haldi; another Indian gathering called a mehndi; a shaadi, which is our Indian wedding; plus a Western wedding and a homecoming ceremony.

Parinaz: It was important to have our dogs be a part of every single event. They’re like our children, and we couldn’t imagine spending a day without them. We fell in love with venues that were beautiful but didn’t allow dogs, so we kept looking.

Sonu: We decided to get matching dog outfits for each event. They wear Santa costumes every Christmas, so they’re used to it. We bought their outfits online from a retailer in India, and most of our wedding outfits were from India as well. My mom took our measurements and went on a trip to India and helped us pick everything out on FaceTime.

Parinaz: I just had one outfit, a silver lehenga that I got in Brampton for our Indian wedding.

Sonu: The first event was the Haldi, which was held at the Grand Victorian Convention Centre in Mississauga.

Parinaz: At the Haldi, a yellow turmeric-based paste gets put on the bride and groom a few days before their wedding. It’s a ceremony that’s meant to purify us before our wedding so that we go into our new lives together clean and blessed. It’s also meant to help ward off evil spirits. During the ceremony, we each sat in traditional shallow circular vessels called urli. We wore yellow, and our dogs were matching us.

Sonu: The Haldi went from about 2 p.m. to 9 p.m. We invited just close family and friends, which came to about 100 guests. The next event was the mehndi, which was held at my parents’ house in North York.

Parinaz: A mehndi is meant to be a celebration for the women in the bride’s and groom’s families, but we invited the important men in our lives too. At a mehndi, the women get their makeup and mehndi—designs made of henna paste—done. But we invited the men to get mehndi too. Some of them got a small design, like “S&P 2025” as a tribute to our wedding date. My mehndi designs told our love story, from our first date to our first apartment, getting our dogs and our house. It was extremely detailed.

Sonu: The mehndi started at 3 p.m. and went until 8 p.m. Aero and Oreo were there with purple outfits matching ours.

Parinaz: Next was our shaadi and our Western wedding, which were both held at Catana Estate in Drumbo, 30 minutes south of Kitchener. It was a huge property with a mansion and tons of outdoor space.

Sonu: Parinaz was up at 5 a.m. to get her makeup done for our shaadi. We began the day at noon with a baraat, the groom’s procession. My side of the family danced their way along the long driveway leading to the property in front of me. Traditionally, the groom enters on a horse, but I went in a car instead. It’s basically one big party. Everyone was dancing and having a good time.

Parinaz: After the baraat was the mandapa, a sacred ceremony that happens under a four-pillar structure. The bride’s family welcomes the groom, then a priest says some prayers before the bride makes her entrance. My two sisters, brother and brother-in-law held the small four-pillar mandapa with a roof over my head as I walked over to Sonu. Then we exchanged flower garlands and walked around a sacred fire seven times. After the seventh walk, we were considered married.

Sonu: Then we had our sangeet, which is an Indian wedding reception. We started with our first dance—a custom mashup of five Bollywood songs. In between, Parinaz and I did short speeches to describe the progression and milestones of our relationship. It was a reenactment of our whole relationship.

Parinaz: We even got the dogs into our dance performance. They came out for one of the songs so we could celebrate with them. Aero is more of a people person, but Oreo was absolutely terrified. Overall, they were good sports about it.

Sonu: Afterward, our family and friends did their own dances. A sangeet has lots of music and dancing as a way for both sides of our family to bond.

Parinaz: There were 250 guests at our Indian wedding. That night, Sonu and I stayed at a hotel together in Cambridge. The next day, we had our Western wedding, which was comparatively chill, with 75 guests.

Sonu: The Western reception started at 3:30 p.m. and was only about 30 minutes long. Before Parinaz did her walk down the aisle, she pre-recorded a message that said how excited she was that this day was finally here and how she couldn’t wait to call me her husband. That got me tearing up before I even saw her.

Parinaz: Oreo and Aero ran into the reception by our sides, with Oreo in a little tuxedo and Aero in a little white dress. To kick things off, we had our first dance to “Thinking Out Loud” by Ed Sheeran—the first song we had ever danced to together, at high school semi-formal. After that, we cut the cake, heard speeches and opened the dance floor with a mix of pop, hip-hop, Latin and Bollywood tracks to keep everyone happy. We were up until 1 a.m.

Sonu: The final event was a small homecoming ceremony at my parents’ house. It’s meant to welcome Parinaz into the family as their daughter-in-law.

Parinaz: Sonu’s mom welcomed me into the home and gave me a blessing. Then I went downstairs, and the men in Sonu’s family—his dad, uncle and grandfather—gave me their blessings. I was exhausted but so proud and happy that we pulled it off. Everything went according to plan.

Sonu: Afterward, our guests told us how much fun they had and that it was the best wedding they’d ever attended.

Parinaz: I’m so happy that Oreo and Aero were a part of everything. They’re our family. Not having them there would have been like not having my mom there.

Sonu: After the homecoming ceremony, we stayed at my parents’ house before flying out for our honeymoon three days later. We went to Jordan for four days, then to the Maldives for two weeks.

Sonu: Married life has been great so far. Parinaz and I had already been living together for five years, so not much has changed in terms of our day-to-day lives. But I do feel different. I feel more accepted by her family, and I like that I can comfortably call her parents Mom and Dad.

Parinaz: It finally feels like we’re at the start of our new life. Our next step together will be moving back to Toronto. We love our house in Odessa, but we’re driving two and a half hours back to Toronto to see family or friends every weekend. Our entire lives are still in Toronto. We’re looking at homes to buy in the GTA. We want to have kids in the future, so that will be a factor in our house hunt. We’re excited to be closer to everyone we love again soon.

Cheat Sheet

Dates: July 9 to 14, 2025 Photography and videography: Crystal Media Day-of coordinator: Confetti and Co. Officiant: Sassan Sanei, Grand River Weddings Venues: Grand Victorian Convention Centre, Catana Estate Dog handler: Royal Paws Pet Services Cake: The Cake Tender Baraat music: Mandeep Gandhi Music Entertainment/DJ: Desi Beatz Bartenders: Bargirls TO Mehndi: Jasmine Henna Art Decor: Unique Decor GTA, Dreamlife, Pookadai Florist Food: Mustard Garden, Aunty’s Kitchen Parinaz’s outfits: KJ Designers, Blu Ivory Bridal Parinaz’s hair and makeup: Elegant Makeup Sonu’s outfits: G3 Plus Fashion, Studiosuits Dog outfits: Boofbybella