Sri Lanka, April. A Nepali bride, a Sri Lankan groom, a Catholic church, and two families who have never met.
The proposal we'd have written for our founder, Shaibyaa, before her own wedding. Boxes marked What actually happened are her, looking back on how it went.
Contents
01
First, the feeling
Where we'd start
Two families who have never met, and three days to become one long table.
Nepal, Sri Lanka, and every city your friends flew in from. Nobody in the room knows everybody. By the last morning, they should. Every day has to do some of that work, and the best version of it won't look like work at all: a dinner that quietly turns into a party, and nobody quite sure when it happened.
What we heard
Two families, two languagesYour mothers don't fully share a language. Your friends come from every chapter of your lives. This isn't a wedding where the room arrives warm. It has to be warmed, on purpose, and early.
A maximalist, with rulesYou love intentional maximalism, the kind you feel walking into a Sabyasachi store. You hate monotone design, awkward networking, and music so loud you can't hear the person next to you. That's a design brief already.
ABBA, Tulum nights, old Colombo housesNone of it is a wedding, and all of it is yours. Faded, lived-in houses that have been entertaining people for decades. Dinners that become parties without anyone announcing it. And one song you've loved forever.
The planner is the brideYou've been saving bridal looks since you were fifteen and you know exactly which designers feel like you. Nothing will be missed. Our worry is the opposite one: that you'll be running the wedding when you should be at it.
The one thing we'd flag
Three days with three different faces is a gift, but only if each one does a different job. Two loud nights back to back stop registering. You need a high, an emotional center, and a night where everyone, including you, finally lets go.
The RoastHigh · everyone meets
The church, then the cliffEmotional · then the exhale
KathmanduHome · let everyone loose
Your three days
Night one · Everyone meets everyone
The Roast
Meet us through the people who know us best.
Welcome dinner · seated, about sixty · Indo-Western
Roasting each other is your love language, so let the first night be exactly that. It's also the cleverest introduction you can give two families who have never met: they learn who you are from the people who've watched it happen.
Friends take the mic between courses. Short, practised, and funny to the whole room, not just the five people who were there. Ask each roaster to send you their story the week before.
Music and shots between the speeches. This is your Tulum night. Nobody announces the party; dinner just quietly becomes one.
The decor brief: Sabyasachi meets Geoffrey Bawa. Your maximalism, Bawa's Sri Lanka. Rich color and pattern, inside architecture that feels lived-in rather than staged.
The seating chart is the real decor tonight. It decides whether the room mixes or splits in two. Do it two weeks out, while you can still think clearly about who carries a table.
Wear something you can move in. You'll be hugging sixty people and getting up between every course.
What actually happened
The roast did exactly what it was meant to. By the end, everyone was in on the inside jokes, and two families who had never met knew us through our friends.
The seating chart did not. I did it three days before the wedding, at my own bachelorette. Half the room was great. The other half was flatter than I wanted.
Day two · The one to watch, then the exhale
The church, then the cliff
Walking into a dream, then a night suspended between sky and water.
Catholic ceremony · sunset · cliffside sundowner
This is the center of everything. It should feel completely different from night one: still, emotional, and easy to follow for the half of the room who've never been to a Catholic wedding.
Start from the song, not the flowers. Your entry song is ABBA's I Have a Dream. Ask what that feels like and design that. If the answer is a garden of oranges and trees, it's also much cheaper than flowers.
Name cards with a memory on the back. One line per guest: your favorite moment with them. It costs nothing but time, and it's the thing people keep.
Read the liturgy with both families in mind. A verse that's ordinary to one side can land hard on the other. Go through every reading before the day, not on it.
Cake and first dance at sunset, straight after the ceremony. The sky does the decorating, and the formalities kick the night off instead of stopping the dance floor two hours later.
Then let the energy drop. A sundowner, live music, a dance floor over the pool. Calmer than night one. The other side of you.
What actually happened
We built the orange orchard. We cut the cake and danced at around six, when the sky was pink.
Nobody saw the twenty hours behind the forty-five-minute ceremony: the verse we removed, the sentence we changed so one side didn't feel erased and the other didn't feel rejected. That's how it should be.
Day three · Bring home to them
Kathmandu, in Sri Lanka
You can't take everyone to Nepal. So bring Nepal to them.
Nepali ceremony in red · then the reception · April heat
Your full Nepali celebration can wait for a year in Nepal. This day is the version for people who've never been. The risk is the obvious one: Nepal reduced to mountains and prayer flags.
Not Nepal. A place, then a memory. When you think of Kathmandu, which version comes to mind? If it's your parents' stories of old Kathmandu and Durbar Square in the eighties, that's the brief.
Build it, don't hang it. Brick walls, marigolds hung imperfectly, food stalls close enough that guests keep bumping into each other, aila in clay pots. A decorator can do something with that.
Narrate the rites. Half your guests will watch a Nepali ceremony for the first time. Someone warm should explain what's happening as it happens.
Dress for April. A lighter red saree over a heavy Banarasi. You want to be present, not melting.
No speeches tonight. The photos are done. This is the night everyone lets loose.
What actually happened
"Nepali-inspired" is not a brief. "My parents' Kathmandu in the eighties" is.
By the end, people knew what it feels like to walk through Kathmandu through my eyes. And after we all jumped into the pool that night, I felt it for the first time: the dread of something good being almost over.
1 of 3
02
What matters to you, and our advice
Three things you told us matter, where they usually go wrong, and what we'd do.
01
Nobody standing alone
What goes wrong
Multicultural weddings split by language. Each family keeps to its own side, friends find the people they flew in with, and the room never becomes one room.
What we'd do
Make mixing the job of every day, not just the first night. Use your loudest relatives as social buffers between groups. And keep breakfast as one long table every morning, for everyone.
What actually happened
Every morning, all of us ate breakfast together at one long, sprawling table. On the last morning, the hotel put the dining room back to its original layout. Clean. Symmetrical. Empty. That's when I cried, not at the wedding.
02
Four outfits you can actually live in
What goes wrong
Couture you can't walk, sit, breathe or dance in, in peak April heat. Or chasing the look everyone else is wearing this season.
What we'd do
Write down what matters before you shop: you can move in it, wear it again, survive the heat in it, and it won't date. Do a color analysis first. Then choose designers by the woman they design for, not by who's popular.
What actually happened
Warm olive undertones ruled out whole families of color, and led me to a blue reception outfit I'd never have picked. A Tarun Tahiliani corset lehenga gown I can wear again with a blazer. A minimal church gown with royal blue Manolos. A deep red Sabyasachi saree with the gold oxidised to match.
03
You'll be the planner. Plan for the last week.
What goes wrong
By the final week, you're not deciding from clarity. You're deciding from depletion. Small decisions you'd normally handle in a minute start to feel impossible.
What we'd do
Lock the seating, the menus and the readings two weeks out. Nothing new gets decided after the bachelorette. And hand off the roles in section 3, so the last week is about you, not the logistics.
Question for you: what's the one decision you know you'll keep reopening? Tell us now, and we'll help you close it early.
03
Things you might not be thinking about yet
Four things that are easy to miss, and matter for you.
1. The roles to hand off
Shaibyaa, this is how you get to be at your wedding instead of running it.
The shadowRuns each day in your place: knows the plan, keeps time, solves problems before they reach you.
Outfit checkerOpens every garment bag the day it arrives and checks it against the photos of what you approved.
Family bridgeSomeone who speaks to both mothers, so neither one is ever left out of a conversation.
Bar watcherKeeps an eye on the alcohol all night, so it doesn't run out or over budget.
2. Your run sheet for day two
Couples forget to put hair and makeup, the photo shoots and food in the run sheet, then miss their shoots. Work backwards from sunset.
Time
What happens
Notes
9:00 am
Hair and makeup start
Count back from when you need to be ready.
10:30 am
Photographer arrives
Details first: gown, shoes, jewelry.
12:00 pm
You eat something
Your shadow brings it.
2:30 pm
Dressed and ready
4:00 pm
The church
Someone explaining the liturgy for your family.
6:00 pm
Cake and first dance
At sunset. Kicks off the night.
7:00 pm
Sundowner on the cliff
Live music, dance floor over the pool.
Example times only.
3. With your designers
Photograph the sample you approved, side by side with your order, before you leave the store. If what arrives is different, that photo is your evidence.
Have outfits arrive days early, not the night of. There's nothing you can fix with curlers in your hair.
A fitting is for sizing, not redesign. If the embroidery or neckline has changed, say so in writing at the fitting.
What actually happened
Getting ready for the welcome party, I unzipped my outfit and found the old store sample: faded, dirty, missing beads. I wore it anyway.
4. The week after
Nobody plans for it. The leftover bottles, the vendor receipts, the dress in a bag you're not ready to open, and a strange grief when everyone leaves. Keep the last morning free, with one more long breakfast, and give yourselves a week before the admin starts.
04
Ways we can work together
Use whichever is useful. We sit on your side of the table, and we never take a cut from a vendor.
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Same method, different couple
No two of these look alike
This one is about two families meeting for the first time, and a bride who couldn't stop planning. The other is about two best friends, a lodge in Nepal, and four days that should feel like everyone has come home for the holidays. Same method. Almost nothing else in common.