It was supposed to be a wedding dance. Instead, it became a tornado shelter party with nearly 400 guests and a volleyball team joining in.
Visha and Ankeet Shah were at the Oklahoma City Convention Center during one of the biggest events of their wedding weekend when the celebration suddenly stopped. The couple was celebrating their traditional Garba dance, which Visha had been especially excited about, when the music cut out and sirens sounded.
“I remember them saying, ‘We have an emergency! There’s a tornado watch happening and we need to take shelter and go downstairs,’” Ankeet recalled to NBC.
What followed did not turn into chaos. With nearly 400 guests at the wedding, the planner and venue staff moved everyone downstairs in about 10 to 15 minutes, according to wedding planner Sydney Ore.
Once they were in the shelter area, the wedding party realized they were sharing the space with others. A volleyball tournament was happening in the building at the same time, and teams had also been told to shelter in place.
That was when the mood changed.
“We started kind of chatting with one of the coaches, and before we knew it, the girls ran onto the court, taking pics with the couple and started chanting and lifting them up,” Ore said.
Members of the OKC Heat 15 National Volleyball Team quickly joined the wedding celebration.
“The girls were basically singing with us, dancing with us. They made us feel like royalty,” Ankeet said.
“We joined into the party,” player Kinley Anderson said.
The Garba did not stop completely. The group recreated it in the shelter, this time without music.
“There’s usually music playing and people singing along,” Visha said. “But we did a silent dance… and we looked over and saw the volleyball girls across the net doing it with us. That was super fun and memorable.”
Visha said the interruption first left her emotional, but that changed as strangers joined in and lifted the mood.
“I was crying a little bit, but it was no longer sad tears,” she said. “It was these joyful tears of complete strangers encouraging me, and encouraging us.”
For the couple, what began as a tornado warning in the middle of a wedding event became one of the moments they will remember most.
As Visha put it, “When things look rough and scary, we can come together and make it joyful.”
