Indian weddings have gotten bigger, bolder and wildly specific

Growing up on Mira Nair’s Monsoon Wedding, a beautiful chaos of marigold garlands, jewel-toned saris and relatives flying in from Houston, Australia and Dubai, all converging on one Delhi home, it felt grand but not exorbitant. A family celebrating love against monsoon rains and familial drama. How naïve was I?

The first crack in that romanticised vision came when my friends started getting married. Luxury was no longer exceptional; it had become the baseline. Every ballroom was dripping in orchids, every sangeet had a celebrity singer, every buffet spread looked like Pinterest on steroids. Which begged the question: if luxury is the norm, how do you stand out?

The answer, it turns out, is turning weddings into full-scale productions that would make a Tamil blockbuster pale in comparison.

Nothing prepared me for the moment I joined a three-way call with my friend’s wedding planner, furiously scribbling notes from a ten-page outfit specification document. Ten pages. For one wedding. We dissected every shade of embroidery, every pearl on a dupatta border, even footwear directives (sneakers, it was decreed, were only permitted at the after-after party).

As I stared at that document, then bid three months’ salary goodbye in credit card payments, I realised I had crossed some invisible threshold into the stratosphere of Indian luxury weddings, where no detail is too small and no expense too great in the pursuit of perfection.

This shift from tradition to theatre is perhaps nowhere more evident than in how couples approach food. Eeshaan Kashyap, founder of Eeshaan Kashyap & Co. and Tablescape by Eeshaan, has carved out an entirely new category he calls “buffetscape”—where culinary artistry meets elaborate design. “I recently designed a sit-down dinner for a wedding group where they wanted a traditional vegetarian thali reimagined with a contemporary twist,” he explains. “The flavours were updated, but the most unique part was that everything had to be served on jade. I actually went back to the client to clarify, did they really want a jade thali? That felt exorbitantly luxurious. Designing a thali, katoris, and plateware in jade was nerve-wracking because each piece was so expensive.”

The requests only get more fantastical. “Another favourite project was last year in Bali, where we created a garden unlike any other,” Kashyap continues. “This client requested something more whimsical—a garden where cocktails flowed from fountains. Guests were handed a glass upon arrival and discovered three or four fountains, each serving a different cocktail—from elderflower-infused drinks to a Malabar-inspired spiced base. Each was engineered with sterilised copper pipes to ensure the liquid never touched untreated metal.” Somewhere, Willy Wonka is shaking his head.

But perhaps his most Alice-in-Wonderland-esque creation was ‘Sweet Dreams’ as a concept. “They asked me to translate the idea of sweet dreams and a love story into a dessert counter, but instead, I created an entire room. When you entered, strawberries were flying, chocolate fountains were everywhere, even the wallpaper was made of edible rice paper.”