Growing up in Mira Nair monsoon wedding, a beautiful chaos of marigold garlands, jewel-toned saris and relatives flying in from Houston, Australia and Dubai, all converging on a Delhi home, seemed grand but not exorbitant. A family celebrating love against monsoon rains and family drama. How naive was I?
The first crack in that romantic vision came when my friends started getting married. Luxury was no longer exceptional; had become the base. Every ballroom was filled with orchids, every sangeet had a famous singer, every buffet looked like Pinterest on steroids. Which begged the question: If luxury is the norm, what does it excel at?
It turns out that the answer is to turn weddings into large-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 dress spec document. Ten pages. For a wedding. We analyzed every shade of embroidery, every pearl on the border of a dupatta, even the shoe directives (it was decreed that sneakers were only allowed at the after-after party).
As I looked at that document and then said goodbye to three months’ salary in credit card payments, I realized that I had crossed an invisible threshold into the stratosphere of luxury Indian weddings, where no detail is too small and no expense too big in the pursuit of perfection.
This shift from tradition to theater is perhaps most evident in the way couples approach food. Eeshaan Kashyap, founder of Eeshaan Kashyap & Co. and Tablescape by Eeshaan, has created a whole new category he calls ‘buffetscape’, where culinary artistry meets elaborate design. “I recently designed a dinner for a wedding group where they wanted a traditional vegetarian meal. thali “Reimagined with a contemporary twist,” he explains. “The flavors were updated, but the most unique part was that everything had to be served on jade. In fact, I went back to the customer to clarify: did they really want a jade thali? That felt exorbitantly luxurious. Designing a thali, katorisand the jade tableware was stressful because each piece was very expensive.
The requests become more and more fantastic. “Another favorite project was last year in Bali, where we created a garden like no 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 spicy Malabar-inspired base. Each was designed with sterilized copper tubing to ensure the liquid never touched raw metal.” Somewhere, Willy Wonka shakes his head.
But perhaps his most Alice in Wonderland-like creation was ‘Sweet Dreams’ as a concept. “I was asked to translate the idea of sweet dreams and a love story to a dessert counter, but instead I created an entire room. When you walked in, strawberries were flying, there were chocolate fountains everywhere, even the wallpaper was made of edible rice paper.”
