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Early Saturday morning during Labor Day weekend, Market Street outside Philadelphia City Hall was filled with dancing and celebration.
None of Philly’s sports teams had won anything. There wasn’t a race happening. The street was closed off for a wedding procession, which isn’t too unusual nowadays.
So what made this gathering blow up on social media?
Between the bride and groom, and guests dancing to the beat of the traditional Indian dhol drum, was a replica of the 1989 Batmobile from director Tim Burton’s “Batman” films.
“I’ve seen elephants, camels and even Mummers in South Asian wedding processions in Philly, but this is a first,” HughE Dillon, founder of the PhillyChitChat blog, wrote with the video he posted on social media.
The couple who took over Market Street was groom Dhruv Padodara, a Philly-born pharmacist, and bride Rishika Chauhan, an orthopedic surgery resident who’s originally from California.
The idea to bring the iconic piece of DC Comics lore from the fictional streets of Gotham City to the real streets of Philly actually started as a joke.
Chauhan and Padodara met on Hinge, shortly after Chauhan moved to the East Coast and was convinced by a fellow resident to get on the dating app. Padodara was her first match and date. Two years later, Padodara proposed at a winery in California.
South Asian weddings are typically multiday events — Chauhan said that 18 months is typically the ideal time frame to plan everything. With their busy work schedules, Chauhan going through her residency and Padodara running his pharmacy in North Philly, they wanted to get the wedding done sooner
“We planned a big fat Indian wedding in eight months, which is somewhat unheard of,” she said.
The pair had separate family gatherings and then a Friday wedding reception on the 33rd-floor terrace of the Loews Hotel, where the wedding ceremonies would happen the next day.
Saturday’s schedule started early in the morning with a baraat, — a celebratory procession to the wedding venue for the groom and his family and friends. Traditionally, the groom makes a grand entrance on an adorned horse, chariot, elephant or fancy car.
Padodara had been a part of many of his friends’ baraats and saw them arrive in Lamborghinis and Ferraris. Those didn’t really interest him, especially since the couple were only getting the zoning permits to block off both sides of Market Street from 12th to 13th streets.
“I can’t really take (the car) anywhere for a spin. I just go up a block at 5 miles an hour, in a Lamborghini that is meant to be driven quite fast usually,” he explained. “So I was like, ‘I don’t really want to waste my time with that.’”
The pair said they wanted Padodara’s entrance to be unique and special and had already set up the zoning permits. They considered segways or a pedicycle — the multipassenger bikes usually used for group tours.
Then, five or six weeks out, Padodara threw out an idea — mostly jokingly.
“I was like, ‘It would be pretty cool if I came out of a Batmobile, because I like Batman and stuff,” he recalled.
Chauhan started Googling. She found that the company Delorean Rental didn’t just offer four-wheeled time machines, but other movie mobiles.
The couple’s wedding planner Arun Bhambri, the founder of Detailed Affairs Team, focuses on South Asian couples and had worked with Delorean Rental before. A Batmobile was a new request, but he said had more challenging ones than this, particularly one hungry elephant for a wedding in Delaware.
“The pre-process for that elephant was feeding it Twinkies, Twix bars and Oreos,” Bhambri recalled. “I was just mind-boggled that all these junk snacks were being thrown into a bucket and being fed to the elephant before the procession actually started.”
The reaction on the street and online to the Batmobile was more than Bhambri had expected, though. Chauhan and Padodara kept it a surprise from wedding guests until the reveal.
To their surprise, the strangers on the street who joined in, along with the friends and family who reached out after seeing the videos, were the cherry on top of a great gathering.
“The Batmobile really just elevated it and we got to kind of make some jokes,” Chauhan said. “During our reception, I introduced us as Batman and Robin.”
Padodara is a big Philly sports fan, and had been to both Eagles Super Bowl parades, as well as the Phillies Championship parade in 2008. He even woke up Chauhan, who was exhausted from work, to head down to Broad Street after the Super Bowl LIX win over the Kansas City Chiefs.
Chauhan, a 49ers fan, got a little revenge at the baraat by getting family members and the wedding DJ to crash it with some Bay area pride and tunes.
For the newly married couple, getting the rare chance to have a celebration at an iconic Philly space and have it be about you and the person you love felt extra special.
“Not many people can say they’ve closed the street down,” Padodara said.
