San Jose couple tie the knot on a Zoom call
Anyone who ever has gotten married knows there are a million things to obsess over. Misplaced rings. Keeping feuding relatives from sitting near each other. Hoping the band shows up on time. But Love Singhal and Sarita Jayantee Biswal are probably the first couple that ever had to worry about their Wi-Fi connection dropping. That’s because Tuesday night they had Santa Clara County’s first-ever wedding conducted over a Zoom conference call, with friends and family witnessing the blessed event online from as far away as India.
Santa Clara County Supervisor Cindy Chavez officiated the wedding from her office at the county government center on North First Street, throwing handfuls of confetti — made of shredded board of
supervisors agendas — in front of her webcam after the couple said, “I do.”
“It’s so hopeful that people are getting married right now,” Chavez said. “I feel full of hope to see Sarita and Love, who have been apart from each other for so long being in the same place and being able to get married and also have their family and friends being able to join them.”
Having their wedding take place on Zoom isn’t actually that unusual for the tech-savvy couple, who met in 2016 on Shaadi. com, an Indian matrimonial website. Singhal was living in San Jose working for Intel and Baswal was in Texas working for Hewlett Packard. When Baswal went back to work in India for a year, they kept in touch via Skype.
They were finally reunited in San Jose in 2019, but Baswal still commutes during the week to Southern California, where she works for Cognizant Technical Solutions. They got engaged on Valentine’s Day this year and decided they didn’t want to wait very long to tie the knot. Their marriage license was issued March 5, and they planned to get married at the chapel at the Santa Clara County government center two weeks later.
But the COVID-19 pandemic that triggered the shelter-in-place order changed their plans.
California law requires that marriages be performed in the physical presence of the officiants, but Chavez wrote to Gov. Gavin Newsom on April 20 requesting a temporary suspension of that requirement because of the statewide shelter-in-place order. Newsom issued an executive order last week temporarily allowing virtual ceremonies, and this was believed to be the state’s first virtual wedding since the change.
As far as weddings go, this one was definitely a do-it-yourself affair. The wedding planners included Santa Clara County Clerk-Recorder Gina Alcomendras, who made sure everything was done legally, and Leslie Chan, a multimedia tech at the county, who kept the ceremony running smoothly from a technical standpoint.
The couple decorated the wall behind them with red and white balloons and flowers. Guests joined the Zoom conference call from as far away as their native India, where it was actually Wednesday morning. Phones were muted so no one had to worry about somebody’s phone ringing during the vows. No band? No problem. Chavez played their song, “Perfect” by Ed Sheeran, over the call as they danced for the first time as a married couple.
“Even in COVID-19, people find a way to connect, and to say in front of God and the world that I’ve chosen this other person to spend the rest of my life with is kind of an awesome thing, especially right now,” Chavez said. “I don’t know if it’ll be the wave of the future, but it’s the wave of right now.”