Natasha and Rohit Hemdev, Leela Palace, Bangalore

Our series, Featured Weddings brings you wonderful moments from weddings held at the finest venues across different cities. Here, bride Natasha shares details about her lavish wedding held in Bangalore last year.

Natasha and Rohit got engaged within 24 hours of their first meeting and had a grand Punjabi-style wedding celebrating their love, and accommodated an ever increasing guest list that included family members and friends from all around the world.

How We Met
Rohit had just moved back to Bangalore from London, and I was based in New York. We first met in New Delhi and felt an instant connect to each other. To our utter surprise, we even got engaged within 24 hours of our first meeting! We’ve been staying in Bangalore now for more than a year and a half.

Wedding Venue
We got married at The Leela Palace in 2015. The hotel is a jewel in the middle of Bangalore. We wanted our wedding venue to be a mix of vintage and contemporary, and the hotel with its impressive Grand Ballroom was the perfect choice. The picturesque staircase and arched windows of this beautiful property provided perfect frames for photographs. A vintage red and white Ambassador decorated with floral arrangements added a further retro vibe.

Wedding Functions
We had nine functions at our #rohtasha wedding, which started off with a private and intimate dinner with just 30 of our closest friends. Our wedding celebrations concluded with a fun youngster’s party right at the end. We wanted a small wedding, but having lived all over the world, that was not possible. Rohit and I have large families so everything had to be on a large scale.

Haldi, Mehndi and Welcome Dinner
We had a very private haldi ceremony where only 100 people were invited. We wanted our wedding to be intimate with very limited guests but to our surprise, our guest list just kept on increasing with each function because of our long list of family members and friends! We organized a welcome dinner which included close to 200 people, and a mehndi which had 400 people. I wore a very elegant lehenga by one of my favorite designers, Kavita Gupta. It made me feel comfortable during the whole mehndi session. All the functions really helped us and the family members from both sides to get to know each other and bond.

The Wedding
The wedding was a traditional affair and was done according to Punjabi customs. The décor had a yellow and pink setting, and the venue was comprehensively decorated with marigold flowers to give it a very ethnic touch. I wore a beautiful gold lehenga by Sabyasachi Mukherjee which has a net dupatta and net sleeves with glittering sequins, while Rohit wore custom-made outfits by Bassam and a Sabyasachi Mukherjee sherwani for the wedding. The makeup was kept matte with a touch of dark wine ruby lips, to bring out the natural glow of the face. My hair was tied up in a braid with a parandhi (hair ornament with tassels), completely matching up to the Punjabi aesthetics.

Sangeet and Reception
We didn’t want a typical reception wherein we had to ‘meet and greet’ several people and take photographs in a typical fashion. We wanted our reception to be remembered, so we split the sangeet into two nights to make it a fun event not only for our guests but also for both the sides of the family to adequately host and perform. I wore a light blue and gold Anita Dongre creation which was comfortable and easy to dance in. I loved how it shimmered during our sangeet-cum-reception night.

The Wedding Makers
Location: The Leela Palace, Bangalore
Bridal Trousseau: Anita Dongre (Sangeet), Kavita Gupta (Haldi), Sabyasachi Mukherjee (Wedding)
Groom’s Trousseau: Bassam, Sabyasachi Mukherjee
Wedding Planner: Shreya Dutta
Décor Artist: Romit Ghosh
Makeup: Subrina Suhail
Videographer: Sid Selvaraj

Photos Courtesy: Ankit Singh

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