Little girls dream about their weddings. Some dream bigger than others.

Rachna Trivedi jokes that she began planning her wedding shortly after birth.

"I always said if I wasn't going to be a doctor, I would be a wedding planner," says the 27-year-old St. Gregory College Preparatory School graduate.

Rachna got her chance after she met Puneet Shroff, 29, in the fall of 2004 when they both began internal medicine residencies in St. Louis. Puneet proposed last March and the wedding planning began immediately.

"I knew it was going to be big because of the size of our families and community," the bride says. "Indian weddings are supposed to be grand."

The wedding is a major celebration for the tight-knit Indian community that Rachna grew up with in Tucson and for Puneet's family, most of whom live in India. Traditional Indian weddings tend to be as lavish as the family can afford, and "Rachna wanted it to be pretty elaborate," says her father, Deven Trivedi.

With four events over three days, planning for the large, traditional celebration proves to be complicated — requiring that expert help be flown in from all over the country. It is also expensive, costing around $400,000, says Sonal Shah, the New York-based consultant specializing in ethnic weddings who was hired for the event. But the grand, late-March wedding goes off as planned with generous parents, a considerate sister willing to devote several weeks for the last-minute preparations and a half-dozen local friends of Rachna's parents working to bring the bride's childhood visions into a 21st-century reality worthy of a fairy tale.

DAY ONE

Families meet

The mehndi function, when the bride's hands and feet are decorated with henna, kicks off the wedding celebrations on March 29. Rachna, dressed in a sleeveless orange punjabi (a long tunic over tight pants) covered with hundreds of shiny beads, sits on a bench in the entry room of the Foothills home her parents and maternal grandparents share. She greets friends and family, who leave their shoes at the door when they arrive, and shows off the intricate pencil-thin designs that mehndi artist Ushma Bavishi drew on the bride's hands and feet over four hours earlier in the day. The spectacularly intricate designs, which become reddish-brown temporary skin decoration, are a traditional part of an Indian bride's wedding.

"The deeper the color the more your husband loves you," teases Zarna Shah, one of the three Phoenix-based mehndi artists hired for the event.

The artists work while seated on bright green and yellow mattresses on the entry room floor. Female guests, waiting their turn to have a hand decorated, sit on silk and velvet pillows on the floor. The male guests, mostly in neutral-colored suits, drift to the next room.

"Traditionally, it is just women, but we're opening it up to everyone because my groom's whole family is here," Rachna says of the mehndi function.

About 60 members of the groom's family traveled from India, Australia and Hong Kong to attend the momentous wedding — Puneet is the first family member to be married in America.

Dinner — a catered vegetarian buffet with Mexican, Italian and Chinese foods — is served in the backyard. After dinner, friends and relatives mingle, the women carefully holding their painted hands cupped before them. Soon the entry hall is abuzz with gossip in several regional Indian languages and festive Bollywood tunes fill the air.

Word of the groom's family's arrival spreads and a welcome group forms at the front door. One by one the extended family enters the decorated room and places an ornate package at Rachna's feet. The bride and groom greet everyone and pose for pictures.

The stereo blasts Bollywood music again and many of the 170 guests begin dancing barefoot on the entryway rug. Rachna, grinning all night, declares the evening a success.

"Everyone is having fun — that's the point of everything," she says. "It's the one easygoing, free-flowing event during the wedding. The program is to have no program."

DAY TWO

Food, music, dancing

The second evening begins much as the first ended — with exuberant dancing. Stunning performances followed by traditional group dancing make the sangeet on March 30 a jubilant affair.

In the middle of the 10,000-square-foot Grand Ballroom at the Doubletree Hotel lies a wooden dance floor with a gold fountain at its center. Red tablecloths topped with bright green napkins fill the room and red garlands hang from the ceiling. A couch covered in tapestries and pillows sits on a stage in front of a white and green curtained backdrop.

"The décor is very important because it creates the Indian feeling," says the bride's father, who hired a decorator from Ohio who specializes in ethnic weddings.

The 350 guests are dressed formally, with yards of flowing fabrics and glittering jewelry. Puneet, who simply wore a suit the night before, dons a red tunic with matching pants and scarf. Rachna appears in a lime green chaniya choli (short top and long flowing skirt) with delicate beadwork and metallic appliqué embroidery.

With the bride and groom settled on stage, the performances begin on the dance floor. Rachna's sister, Neema Trivedi, 23, hosts the program, which is inspired by the bride's passion for classical East Indian dance. Female family members and friends present traditional Indian folk dances, which tell stories through dramatic facial expressions, hand flares and acrobatic leaps and bends. Puneet's sisters, Divya Shroff, 31, and Arati Shroff, 27, chronicle the couple's relationship in song.

"I cried multiple times," Rachna says later. "It meant so much to me."

Shortly after Magic Mike, a New York-based Indian disc jockey who is famous within the international Indian community, begins spinning tunes and guests head to the dance floor in droves, a spicy aroma fills the ballroom. Jay Bharat, a longtime friend of the Trivedi family and one of the largest Indian caterers on the West Coast, presents a Bombay-style dinner consisting of savory finger foods served in five decorated food carts.

"The next three meals in a row will be Indian cuisine from different parts of India," says Deven, the bride's father.

After dinner, the DJ spins traditional folk tunes, Bollywood favorites and modern techno-folk mixes and the group dancing goes into full swing. Traditional folk dances from Gujarati (the state in western India from which the Trivedi family comes) and Punjabi in northern India (where the Shroffs are from) are fast-tempo and lively with heavy beats.

"In the different states, the food is different, the dress is different and the customs are different," says Bindu Shroff, Puneet's mother. "We are from different areas but we include both cultures."

A Los Angeles-based dhol player keeps beat with the music on the Indian folk drum and the dance floor becomes a whorl of activity. Dancers clap and sing to the music while taking spinning steps that move the group around in a large circle. Later two lines of dancers, each person armed with a pair of dandiya sticks, tap the sticks behind their backs, in front of them and against their partner's sticks to the beat of the music.

"The music is such that you cannot stop dancing," says Deven, who pulls people onto the frenzy until midnight.

DAY THREE

The wedding

Despite the late night sangeet, the wedding party rises around 6 a.m. to prepare for the ceremony at the Lodge at Ventana Canyon.

"We have found an auspicious time for the wedding between 11 and 12," says Deven, who consulted an Indian astrologer. "That's the reason we have to do the early morning planning. For both of them astrologically, this is a good time."

Around 9 a.m. the groom's family gathers for a ceremony to prepare Puneet for his wedding.

Meet the couple

Bride: Rachna Trivedi.

• Age: 27.

• Hometown: Tucson.

• Education: B.S. in biochemistry from Brown University; M.D. from Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia.

• Current occupation: Resident physician, internal medicine, at Washington University in St. Louis.

• Future plans: Move to Houston for a fellowship in hematology and oncology at Anderson Cancer Center at the University of Texas.

Groom: Puneet Shroff.

• Age: 29.

• Hometown: Libertyville, Ill.

• Education: B.A. in political science from University of Illinois in Chicago; M.D. from University of Illinois in Chicago.

• Current occupation: Resident physician, internal medicine, at Washington University in St. Louis.

• Future plans: Move to Houston for a fellowship in hepatology and liver transplantation at Baylor College of Medicine and advanced training in gastroenterology.