Real Wedding · goa
Lindsay & Dharmin
USA & India → The St. Regis Goa Resort, Mobor, South Goa
An American bride and an Indian groom at The St. Regis Goa, with two full ceremonies rather than one blended compromise: a traditional South Indian mandap built on the sand, an American ceremony on the lawn, and a haldi done in Goa's own blue-and-white Portuguese tilework.
The obvious way to plan a wedding between an American bride and an Indian groom is to blend the two into a single ceremony that half-satisfies both families. Lindsay and Dharmin did the opposite. They gave each tradition its own day, its own set, and its own guest experience, and let the differences stand rather than sanding them down. With 250 guests on the ground across three days, it made for a longer programme and a much better wedding.
The Indian ceremony was built on the sand. We constructed a traditional South Indian mandap with a tiered gopuram silhouette rising above the canopy, hung it with jasmine and rose garland curtains, and set it facing the Arabian Sea so the ritual ran into the sunset. Guests walked down through a corridor of hanging jasmine on timber frames, past brass lamps standing in the sand. From the air it reads as a single red block against a very long white beach, which is the photograph the drone was there for.
The haldi went in a direction we had not tried before. Rather than the usual marigold yellow, we built it in blue and white azulejo, the Portuguese tilework that is Goa's own visual language, with the turmeric left to be the only yellow in the frame. Hand-painted giraffes, a yellow scooter against a tile arch, flower carts, a watercolour tile floor runner, and a full run of games — parrot astrologer, giant jenga, bottle striker. For guests who had flown in from the United States and had never seen a haldi, it worked as an entry point: a garden party they could walk into, with a ritual happening inside it.
The American ceremony was the quietest set of the three and the one that took the most restraint. A sweeping pastel floral arc over a mirrored aisle, crystal strands falling from it, and chairs tied with blush ribbon on the lawn under the palms. No mandap vocabulary, no Indian motifs borrowed in. It was allowed to be what it was, which is the whole reason it did not feel like a themed afterthought.
Then a first dance on the grass between sparkler fountains, an afterparty under disco balls, and at some point in all of it, an arrival by speedboat with smoke flares going off over the water. St Regis Goa gives you a beach, a golf course and a lawn on one property, which is the practical reason a wedding this shape is possible there at all.
The Wedding, in Frames
The Team
| Lead Designer | Ajit |
| Wedding Planning | Panigrahana Weddings |
| Decor & Production | Panigrahana Studio |
| Venue | The St. Regis Goa Resort, Mobor, South Goa |
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