Abe Gupta and Vaishali Bhatnagar J.D. ’12 wed on Valentine’s Day 2015 at Hayes Mansion in San Jose.
Halfway through his first date with Vaishali Bhatnagar, Abe Gupta knew she was the one. “I was completely absorbed in this conversation,” he says. “I remember thinking ‘I haven’t felt this alive and engaged in so long.’ ”
For Vaishali, it took a little longer to be sure — their second date. “This feeling washed over me, that this could be the beginning of everything,” she says. “I already felt so comfortable with him. I had this feeling of ‘wow, this is the real deal.’”
Their connection came as a surprise, since the two attorneys were both certain they would not end up with another lawyer. In fact, during their first, brief exchange at a networking event in August 2013, they jokingly discussed how much they disliked lawyers.
Abe, 32, grew up in Danville. He graduated from Stanford University at 19 years old and earned his law degree from USF by age 22. As the vice mayor of Dublin, where the couple lives now, he’s the youngest elected official in Alameda County and the first politician of South Asian descent elected in the San Ramon Valley. The couple also have a law office together, the AV Law Firm, in San Ramon.
Vaishali, 27, is a Saratoga native who attended UC Davis and Santa Clara University, “becoming a lawyer when I was really old: 24,” she says.
Abe proposed in 2014 at a winery in Livermore that he and Vaishali had visited early in their relationship. Their wedding was a six-day affair, with the traditional Hindu ceremony taking place at San Jose’s Hayes Mansion on Feb. 14.
On the Wednesday night before their wedding, the bride had a henna party at her parents’ home. On Thursday night, the couple held a Sangeet (meaning “song”) at the Dublin Community Center so guests could meet informally. Friday night was a family dinner, with the wedding and reception following on Saturday. Abe rode into the wedding ceremony on a horse, as per tradition, but the couple says they were deliberate in choosing which rituals had meaning for them, such as the priest asking for blessings from their deceased ancestors.
On Sunday, the couple dined at the groom’s parents’ house, where Vaishali was welcomed as the new bride, and on Monday the couple joined the bride’s parents for lunch, where the groom was welcomed into the family.
Life for the pair is a bit slower now, since they ran Abe’s re-election campaign at the same time they were planning the wedding. “That was intense,” Abe says, noting that, one moment “you’re putting up lawn signs and knocking on doors, and then the next, you’re looking at tablecloths.” But they managed to do both, as well as establish their law office, admitting that neither knows what to do with too much free time.