Nearly a hundred dancing guests spilled out of a white tent and into the streets of a quiet Midwestern subdivision on a Wednesday night. I wondered how long before someone called the cops.

Sippie, the bride, dripping in gold and wearing a hot pink lehenga, hopped in the back of a pickup. One of her relatives, dancing with a large, lighted pot on her head, led a parade of guests waving glow sticks and their bouncing arms over their heads.

The bride’s father, Neetu, is a college friend of my husband’s. In fact, my husband remembers dancing at one of Neetu’s wedding celebrations decades ago. Now, we were at our first Sikh Punjabi jaggo, a prewedding celebration with booming bhangra music, ebullient folk dances and an abundance of food and drink.

I’ve attended more than a hundred weddings -- 111, to be exact. Many of them have featured diverse traditions across South Asian cultures. But this was the first time I’d been part of a processional like Sippie’s jaggo.

Jaggo literally means “wake up,” and the event is meant to wake up the neighbors to let them know a wedding is coming up and to spread joy through the community. That’s good and well in India, I thought. But I was a bit nervous about the reception this merry band of revelers -- men in colorful turbans and women with vibrant, phulkari dupattas -- would get in a buttoned-up suburb of St. Louis.

It was 8 p.m. on a school night, after all.

Sippie quickly stepped down from the truck bed, saying she wanted to properly dance. She joined her relatives, who were competing in an informal dance contest between her mother’s and father’s sides. A trend in South Asian weddings involves elaborately choreographed and rehearsed dance performances by the family and friends. My husband and I have been included in a few group dance numbers at other weddings, proving that skill and talent aren’t prerequisites to participate.

But this dance-off was different. This was an exuberant, unrehearsed jubilee -- a mix of immigrants, their children and grandchildren, unapologetically taking up space in America in a way that has lately felt less welcome.

I met one of the many cousins who had traveled from out of town to attend the wedding. She explained that the host family gives advance notice to their neighbors about this boisterous tradition. As we walked, a car drove up behind the gathering. One of the guests walked beside the vehicle, parting the crowd to create a path for the driver to cross. The partygoers cheered the driver through.

A few residents came out on their driveways to wave and clap along with the wedding guests. On the march back to the house, I noticed another driver sitting patiently in his car for the procession to pass. Neetu and his wife were talking and laughing with their neighbor and urging him to come to their house and join them for dinner and drinks.

Watching that moment unfold felt restorative. When our political leaders are fomenting division and fear of difference, neighbors across this country still appreciate one another’s joy even when the celebrations look completely different from their own.

Back inside the tent, women of all ages began a series of traditional dances and songs. It unleashed an unbridled joy followed by a surprise dance number. Neetu and his wife, Pinky, performed to a poignant song about a daughter leaving her parents’ home.

It’s the beginning of an emotional farewell, which will continue in ceremonies and parties over several days, until her departure. Sippie’s face beamed watching her parents.

For Punjabis, dancing is a love language.

That night, it was understood by everyone within earshot.

The day "Suja" saw her young son crying and banging on the car window as her husband drove him away, she knew she had to get away.

Terrified and sobbing, she walked to a nearby playground and typed into Google: “My husband is hitting me. My son is crying.”

The number for a domestic abuse hotline came up. She called. The hotline worker asked if she was safe. Suja cried and said her husband had taken their son, and she didn’t know what to do.

They advised her to go back to their home. Pack quietly. Wait until her husband leaves the house again. The next day, Suja picked up her son from school and called the crisis helpline. They sent a cab and took them to a safe house.

When her husband realized they were gone, he began calling her relentlessly.

Suja, who is being identified by a nickname for her safety, went back to him that night, again hoping that he might change. She had left once before. Years ago, she took her son to India to escape her husband’s abuse. Family pressure and his promises of change brought her back to America, to the St. Louis area.

Change didn’t last.

This time, he reverted to his patterns much more quickly. Within a week, he started hitting their child. Suja called 911. The cops asked her if she had a place to go, and the crisis center sent another cab.

“I didn’t come back,” she said.

This was in 2015. When she left, Suja had an H-4 visa, granted to dependents of immigrant workers in America on an H1-B visa. The shelter connected her to Aruna Tailor, an advocate for domestic abuse survivors who has helped them navigate complex legal and immigration paperwork. Tailor advised her to file for an order of protection. After her husband was served court papers, he fled to India, taking all their passports and revoking Suja and their son’s visas.

Suja remembers her husband’s lawyer's words to her at the safe house: “You’re out of status now.”

She was desperate and terrified. Suja had $20 to her name and a dead cellphone with no service.

She realized that if she ever went back to her husband, she and her son could be killed, but once it was time for them to leave the shelter, she had no idea where to go. A friend from her church collected money for a deposit on a one-bedroom apartment.

Suja, whose husband had never allowed her to work in the U.S., began looking for a job that would pay in cash. Despite having a master’s degree, she accepted a restaurant job offering $3 an hour. She also met a woman at her local library who became another lifeline. This woman helped her find work cleaning houses, so Suja could pay her rent in cash.

Tailor helped her file for a temporary work authorization permit for domestic abuse survivors that the Biden administration had put on a faster timeline. Then, Suja’s husband came back from India.

Suja filed for divorce. It took more than three years of court battles to get it finalized. She won protection orders and testified in court when her ex violated them and began stalking her. In 2018, she applied for a permanent resident card for domestic violence victims.

Tailor, who co-founded a nonprofit for South Asian domestic abuse victims and serves on several boards to help survivors, says many factors prevent immigrant women from seeking help. They face cultural or language barriers and are often reliant on their abusers for legal immigration status. One of the women she was helping told her family about the abuse, and they told her to bear it, Tailor said. When she does presentations about domestic violence for refugee or immigrant groups, she is careful about the words she uses. If the women reveal they went to a presentation on domestic violence, it may trigger violence in the home, Tailor said.

Mary Ann Owens, CEO of The Women’s Safe House in St. Louis, said their help is available to any victim regardless of immigration status. In fact, they have a legal advocate who helps those survivors with the long and difficult process of regaining legal status. She said the current political crackdown on immigrants and ICE raids, which have ensnared even those who are here legally, have created an atmosphere of such fear that those trapped in abusive situations refuse to seek help.

Many won't even leave their homes.

Once Suja was legally allowed to work, she found a professional contract job with a large corporation. She rebuilt her life -- buying a used car and a small home, creating stability for her son. The nightmares that plagued her daily have lessened.

Suja said sometimes she still feels ashamed for the years she stayed in her abusive marriage.

“I was a very well-educated person,” she said. “How could I not know these things?”

She has continued to work under an authorization permit while her application for permanent legal status has been pending in the system for seven years.

She has no idea how much longer she’ll be waiting.

For help, contact the National Domestic Violence Hotline by texting “start” to 88788 or calling 800-799-SAFE (7233) or going to thehotline.org. The Department of Health and Human Services has also compiled a list of organizations by state (bit.ly/47jV00K).

Charles Frey, 32, stood at the altar on his wedding day and spotted his third grade teacher sitting in the pews at the Catholic Student Center at Washington University.

That moment connected a childhood turning point to an adult milestone.

Frey, an EMS provider, grew up attending Webster Groves schools in the St. Louis area before earning a business degree at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. Now, he’s attending the St. Louis Fire Academy to become a firefighter.

As a young kid, he struggled in school. He had trouble focusing, taking tests and working under pressure. Even when he tried his best, it often wasn’t enough.

“I was not any good at school,” he said.

He knew his brain worked differently than other kids'. Around age 4, Frey was diagnosed with a form of autism then called Asperger’s syndrome. Back then, patience and understanding were rare. Then came third grade, and Miss Katie O’Connor. She was patient and compassionate with him. She worked with him one-on-one, teaching him to read and helping him understand math.

O’Connor was early in her teaching career in 2002, when she invited her entire third grade class to the wedding ceremony where she became Mrs. Katie French. French recalls that she was moving from third to fourth grade with the same class, and she wanted them there.

“Those kids have a special place in my heart,” she said. “We did a lot of growing up together.”

Twenty-three years ago, Frey was the one sitting in the pews at St. Margaret of Scotland church, watching his teacher get married. It was the first church wedding he ever attended.

It made an impression on him, and now, as an adult, he realizes how much it meant.

When Frey and his fiance, Mary Seise, began planning their Oct. 4 wedding, she asked him if he had any mentors he wanted to invite. He immediately thought of French. He had never forgotten the teacher who taught him how to read and, more importantly, to believe in himself.

He wanted to thank her properly, so he wrote a letter telling her how special she was to him and how she had changed his life. After some online sleuthing, he found French's address and mailed her a wedding invitation and the letter.

French, now in her 26th year of teaching, was surprised when she received the invite -- her first from a former student -- and remembered Frey instantly.

“He was a unique personality,” she said. “He did need a little extra attention, but he was more capable than he knew.” She had the same expectations for him as everyone else, and the class culture was one of supporting and encouraging one another.

French remembers opening the invitation and reading his letter.

“It brought tears to my eyes,” she says. “A lot of times, teachers don’t get that feedback. To hear that from someone I taught at 8 or 9 years old, it was so touching.”

She didn’t hesitate to RSVP “yes.”

In the receiving line, Frey greeted French with a hug and introduced her to his bride.

"Mrs. French, it’s so good to see you," he said. She reintroduced him to her husband. Frey laughed and said he remembered him being a lot bigger from when he was a kid.

In the card with her gift, French included a snapshot from her wedding more than two decades earlier, showing her and her husband flanked by Frey and his classmates.

French received a gift herself that day: She got to reconnect with the small boy who had once struggled to learn, now standing tall as a husband and fulfilling his dreams. She said the experience affirmed a belief she’s held throughout her career.

“I’ve always thought that kids won’t remember the content you teach them,” she says. “But they will remember how you made them feel.”

That rings true for Frey.

“She saw something in me that I couldn’t see in myself,” he says.