BHUBANESWAR: Weddings in our country are all about lavish gastronomical menus but this couple in the City consciously made an unusual choice. Instead of hosting a sumptuous feast for friends and relatives, they arranged a special treat for around 500 animals here on their big-day.
Keeping the promise they had made to each other during three years of courtship, Eureka Apta, an independent filmmaker, and his dentist wife, Joana, dedicated their wedding to a noble cause.
Besides feeding the stray animals with the help of a voluntary organisation - Animal Welfare Trust Ekamra - here, they also donated money to the NGO’s animal shelter which houses several rescued animals.
Two days before their marriage, they had also visited the shelter and distributed food items and medicines to animals.
On September 25 as they were busy taking the marriage vows at a tiny village temple in Nuagaon near Tangi, volunteers of AWTE served the delicious mix of rice and non-vegetarian items, which the couple had sponsored, to stray animals in every nook and corner of the City.
Ever since Joana started dating Eureka, both had discussed how to they make their wedding special. The couple had even been saving money for the charitable donations which they strongly believe in. But the pandemic brought financial uncertainties in their lives.
As shootings stopped, Eureka, who has shot various documentaries on rural Odisha and Jharkhand, lost some of his projects. But, the couple was determined to fulfil their dream. So, they took a loan from bank and made the donation to the voluntary organisation.
They kept the wedding a low-key an affair. Joana even wore my mother’s wedding saree instead of splurging on a super-expensive one.
“We wanted to pay tribute to my mother who died of cancer,” Eureka added. The couple even wrote a letter to the animals for which they donated, remembering the groom’s mother and the bride’s grandmother - both of whom died in the same year, 2017.
The couple had also vowed to help the animal shelter flourish on their wedding day. It was one of her wedding vows.
A pilot-turned-filmmaker, Eureka was moved by the sight of disabled and abandoned hybrid animals at the shelter. “Early this year, we rescued a dog which had met with an accident.
That’s when we had first visited the shelter. And, the sight of helpless animals - some with injured or wounded limbs - made us feel miserable. It was then that we decided why not donate for animals instead of choosing other forms of charity,” the 27-year-old groom recalled.