The first ritual in a Gujarati wedding is the Ganesh Puja. Lord Ganesha is worshiped as the remover of obstacles and the deity of new beginnings, making this an essential first step in the wedding preparations. Held before the main ceremony, the Ganesh Puja is typically a family affair where the bride and groom’s families seek Ganesha’s blessings for prosperity and smooth proceedings. It’s also a wonderful time for relatives to gather, pray, and set a spiritual tone that will carry through to the main wedding day.

The Pithi, or Haldi ceremony, brings families and friends together to apply a mixture of turmeric, chickpea flour, and rose water to the bride and groom’s skin. Turmeric is not only a symbol of purity but also an age-old beauty ingredient, believed to bestow a radiant glow on the couple. The Pithi ceremony is often filled with laughter, music, and splashes of color as relatives take turns applying the paste. It represents good fortune and wards off any negative energy from the couple’s life before their union.

"Graha Shanti" is a Hindu ritual that translates to "planetary peace," where specific ceremonies are performed to appease the planets (known as "grahas") and neutralize any negative influences they might have on a person's life, typically done by seeking blessings from the planetary deities through prayers, offerings, and rituals, often performed before significant life events like marriage or moving into a new home; the goal is to bring harmony and positive energy into one's life. The main focus of the Graha Shanti before the wedding is to ensure that the planets are aligned for the bride and groom to live a happy life together.

This event is were we bless the structure in which the wedding takes place. The structure is called the mandap and we sometimes use an artificial piece to represent the wedding structure. Traditionally, parents of both the bride and the groom seek the blessings of the Earth and dig the soil where they would build the wedding mandap. 5 men of the family also bless the wedding sticks which originally would then be planted at the site of the wedding (nowadays they will use a plant pot). The mandvo muhurat is a ceremony that bears a deep religious significance because our parents respectively seek the blessings of Mother Earth and ask permission to commence the wedding.