Sanjay Gupta & Rebecca Olson

As a neurosurgeon and CNN senior medical correspondent who spent a month with the U.S. Navy in Iraq, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, 35, has been in plenty of trying situations. But his resolve was tested anew when he proposed to Rebecca Olson, 36. "I wrote her a poem and in the last line asked her to marry me," says Gupta. "Watching her read it, I was very nervous-it was over a page long." Adds Olson, a family law attorney, "He was down on one knee and asking me to marry him before I even got to the end!"

The Shell House at Ashley Hall in Charleston, South Carolina-a private girls school near Olson's family home-was the site of the couple's lavish May 15th wedding. Gupta, a Michigan native whose parents immigrated from Northern India in the mid-sixties, "always wanted a Hindu wedding," Olson says. "I was thrilled to have one."

Gupta arrives at the baraat, or groom's welcoming ceremony, a moment marked by music and dancing. Forty-five minutes later Olson, in a hand-beaded silk lengha (a two-piece dress) and a choli, or long scarf, was carried in on a chair by her brothers. The couple then took part in a series of Hindu rituals, including mangal pheras, in which they circled a holy fire four times. The person who sits down first is said to rule the marriage. "Rebecca won that one," Gupta says.

The couple, after traditional bhangra dancing. A raucous dance party followed in an 1860 ballroom that Tara Guerard of Soiree had transformed into a sexy lounge.