Weddings are beautiful.

There is no disputing that fact. They're the most beautiful celebration of love with the people most important to you. They're intimate even when they're huge and they're so. much. fun. The colors, the clothes, the flowers, the vibrancy, and just the idea of being with someone you love and taking a whole week to celebrate that idea.

But they're also loud, stressful, and just the definition of " extra."

My family friends and I have been closely following two of the biggest Bollywood weddings of the year (possibly of our lifetimes???) - the weddings of Deepika Padukone and Ranveer Singh and of Priyanka Chopra and Nick Jonas.

Deepveer's wedding was stunning. Lavish, sure, but from their pictures, it looks like the perfect amount. You can see real love in their pictures, you can feel the sunshine, you can hear their genuine laughs. They're a celebrity couple for sure, and their outfits, their backdrops, their parties did not let us forget that. I mean, that was pure royalty-level of stunning. But yet, it felt intimate, genuine. It felt like love. It had an authenticity to it.

They're so beautiful.

I'm crying, look at how happy they look together. Look at how she's laughing. Look at how he's looking at her. That's what you see first, and then you notice the lake, then you notice their clothes and whatnot. But first, you see the love and happiness, because it's genuine. It's authentic.

Priyanka and Nick's wedding – don't even get me started on that. Along with being the most unnecessarily extra and way-too-big affair, it's also just so tangibly fake. It doesn't feel natural. The entire thing felt way too orchestrated and formal and even political on some levels. I mean, who in the world needs a veil that's literally miles long? That's just unnecessary. There's a point where lavish and grandeur just go way too far and become tacky.

There's a word for this in Hindi, dhikava, or even the phrase show-shey baaji. Both are negatively-connotated to mean someone or something that's showing off or pretending to be much more than they are. To be absolutely transparent, I do not approve of their match because I honestly don't think they're really in love – their relationship seems way too stiff and unnatural (an opinion based entirely and only on the way they interact with each other in interviews and other media reporting). It almost felt like they needed all that to distract from their odd relationship, or to "prove" their legitimacy in some way.

But aside from questioning the legitimacy of their relationship (because honestly, who am I to do that?), I am just simply made uncomfortable by the sheer size and scale of these weddings. As a little girl, of course, I dreamed of huge weddings and a big party with lots of food, lots of people, beautiful outfits, and more dancing than should be allowed. As I got older, my tastes sophisticated and the scale of my dream wedding shrunk a little to be classier, lower-key, more intimate, but none-the-less, it still indulged my material desires for beauty.

Yet now, after the semester I've had, I've found that I don't care anymore for this showmanship. I don't care about the decorations or the picture-ops or the big fancy displays. I kind of just want authenticity. I want a celebration, but I want it to be special, intimate, packed with meaning and purposefulness, and full to the brim of love. True, honest, fearless love.

I've always said that I want a wedding where all I see is my significant other. The rest of it, the outfits, the backdrops, the decorations are just noise in the background, just little pieces. The most important thing would just be us. And so it wouldn't matter what else happened. And that mentality has been true for almost everything I've done. In any of the parties I've thrown, I've cared about aesthetics but always in the context of the people I want there. I've spent more time creating curated guest lists and planning fun games and experiences than I've ever spent on decorations. I've always favored backyard parties over banquette hall parties. I still like dressing up and looking nice, of course, anyone would. But I would so much rather throw on jeans and sweater and celebrate an important night with a bonfire, than with fancy dinnerware in a big fancy room full of people I don't really know.

But then again, I also love big fancy rooms with big dance floors. I loved getting dressed up and taking cute candids with my favorite people. And I love the giant romantic gestures of making a high-quality video production of your favorite memories together and displaying it for everyone to see. I love the idea of spending a month with my family friends putting together a whole dance routine to show the guest of honor at the party. I love the whole show of speeches and spending hours and hours dancing to DJ-ed music.

But that's where I think the caveat lies – I don't mind the big, romantic gestures and the grand shows, but I mind it when it's inauthentic. I might when it's so big that it becomes impersonal. All of those things I mentioned, the dancing, the pictures, the videos, the speeches; they might be grand productions, but they're still intimate. They're scaled down, they're made personal, they're special because of the people and the intentions behind them. That authenticity is impossible to fake. That authenticity is what I search for in the grandeur.

So, throw your lavish parties, have your grand displays, indulge in a little dhikava. But just remember to keep it authentic.