A dream Kochi nuptials & a presidential visit: American's wedding happens, with some help from Kovind

KOCHI: A US citizen was spared the nightmare of shifting the venue of her immaculately-planned destination wedding in Kochi at the 11th hour, thanks to the intervention of President Ram Nath Kovind.

Ashley Hall of Ann Arbor in Michigan had chosen Taj Malabar hotel at Willingdon Island here as the venue of her destination wedding and after reaching Kochi, she tweeted an aerial picture of the wedding venue on Saturday. But on the same day, she had the shock of a lifetime when security personnel asked her to shift the wedding venue as the President was staying at the hotel as part of his Kerala visit.



Heartbroken, she tweeted, “Sometimes you plan a destination wedding for 8 months at an elite hotel in India. Sometimes the President of India makes an impromptu trip to that hotel on the day of the wedding. Sometimes you get 48 hours notice to plan an entirely new wedding.”


On Sunday, Ashley, who had planned the wedding to the minutest detail for the last eight months, made a last-minute appeal to the office of the President himself by tweeting to @rashtrapatibhvn about her hardship of being told to shift the wedding venue at the last minute.


She got a reply from the Rashtrapati Bhavan on the same day informing her that the President has decided to grant an exemption to her wedding in terms of security cover and that she can proceed with the wedding at the same venue.


Ashley tweeted on Sunday thanking the President and Taj Malabar for working with her on the issue and for sorting it out. Rashtrapati Bhavan didn’t forget to convey the President’s best wishes for her marriage.