About me
I’m Shaibyaa. I planned a three-day, two-religion destination wedding, had the time of my life — and still got my final budget four days before it. I’m a Nepali bride who married a Sri Lankan groom on the coast. Stanford MBA, years at McKinsey, and the information still was not there to be found. So I called close to a hundred brides and built the place I wish we had.
As featured inVOGUE This multicultural wedding in Sri Lanka was inspired by Kathmandu in the 80s →
My wedding, day by day
Nepali ceremonies in Kathmandu, a Catholic church, and a cliff reception in Sri Lanka. Everything I know, I learned making this happen.
It started as a list
Before we began planning, my partner and I made a list of things we loved, hated, romanticised and avoided. Most of it had nothing to do with weddings, which was the point.
That’s us. Yours will be a completely different list — the method is in Build Your World.
Night one
We love roasting each other, and this was the night every chapter of our lives finally met. So between each course, our closest friends took the mic and roasted us — by the end everyone was in on the inside jokes. Music and shots between the speeches, an homage to our favorite nights in Tulum. The decor was Sabyasachi meets Geoffrey Bawa: me the maximalist, Sabya the aesthetic I love, and Eshan from Sri Lanka. A good marriage of the two.
Day two
The church wedding was the center of everything. My entry song was ABBA’s I Have A Dream, so we turned the whole church into an orange orchard — it should feel like walking into a dream. Then a cliffside sundowner, with the dance floor built over the pool so the night sat suspended between sky and water. Live music, much calmer energy than night one. The other side of us.
Day three
We couldn’t take everyone to Nepal, so we brought Kathmandu to them. I stepped back and asked what I actually love about the city, and the answer was the way my parents describe it from the eighties. So we recreated walking through it: stalls, flowers hung imperfectly, guests bumping into each other, aila shots in clay pots. By the end, people knew what it feels like to walk through Kathmandu through my eyes.
Why you can trust any of this
From Shaibyaa
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Tell us about your wedding. Wherever you are in it, and however small the question. No cost, no pitch.
