The intimate Bengaluru wedding where the groom made the engagement ring

In a time of hyper-moodboarding, Dhwani Kathotia, founder of creative agency Distil, married Aman Poddar, an independent jewellery designer, in a wedding brimming with personalised details late last year. Hosted at a farmhouse outside Bengaluru with a guestlist of just 60 friends and family, the couple tied the knot against an epic temple kalamkari from the mid-1900s that depicted Radha-Krishna’s wedding (fitting considering Aman’s father, Abhishek Poddar, is the founder of MAP Academy). But it wasn’t all pomp and ceremony at this one-night celebration, which ended with the duo dancing the night away.

Third time’s a charm

Dhwani: Both Aman and I are from Bangalore. We’ve known of each other since high school, but we weren’t actively friends. In 2019 we ended up hanging together with a bunch of common friends in London, but nothing happened. Two years later, we matched on Hinge. We planned a date and everything but then he got COVID, so nothing happened then either, and I deleted the app. Then, in 2023, we met at the same mutual friend’s house for what we both thought was a casual hang but which turned out to be a 20-people party, and we both showed up in pyjamas.

Aman: Dhwani decided to leave early because she has a 10 pm bedtime and we didn’t end up speaking at all that night. When she left, I got downstairs and left with her. We ended up talking outside our cars for nearly an hour after that.

Dhwani: The 10 pm bedtime actually didn’t last for very long.

Aman: So, we finally went on a date to Navu Project, the same place we had planned to meet three years ago. We had both just got out of serious long-term relationships, so we were in a similar headspace of going with the flow. But we enjoyed each other’s company so much that we met three times in the first five days and that’s kind of how it all started. It’s just crazy how there were so many opportune moments in which our paths could have collided, but it happened at the time where it made most sense.

The non-diamond engagement ring

Aman: We got into the relationship with the intention of potentially being married—it wasn’t just to fool around, so we had that conversation pretty early in our relationship. There arrived a time where I just knew, and I told a couple of my friends. My first thought was of the ring. I figured a typical diamond ring is not something she would wear every day, and that I’d make her a more casual one that’s still deeply personal. I wanted to make a band but my style of work is very intricate and detailed, so I crafted one that has a hundreds of tiny metal granules that are in 11 colours of gold—11 alloys—all of which I made myself. For the proposal, I actually didn’t want to do anything dramatic, so I asked her if she’d like to get away from the city.

Dhwani: I kind of expected the proposal because of how quickly Aman took charge of planning the entire trip. Being a type-A personality, every other trip we’ve done, I’ve planned myself, and this was the first time I had to do nothing, which was really odd. The funny thing is the anticipation. We were in Coorg and had a lovely dinner the first night and I thought that’s when it would happen. Then we went on this long walk by the lake, but it didn’t happen then either. I thought perhaps the room would be decorated and it would happen there. Then I started kicking myself for conjuring up these stories in my head wondering whether it’s happening on this trip at all. Eventually, I began tidying up the room and when I turned around I found him sitting on the bed with a ring, and that’s kind of how it happened. There was nothing extravagant about it, but it was still wonderful.

Tiny details for a big celebration

Aman: We didn’t have an army of wedding managers and organisers. The true beauty of it came through our closest people coming together and contributing in special ways. My sister and Dhwani’s friend from university sat together and hand-painted all the 100 placemats that were used at the wedding dinner. We curated a flower-infused cocktail menu with Lupa where jasmine flavours took centre stage.

Dhwani: When I thought about getting married I always knew that I wanted to get the invites designed by my sister Chahat, who runs her own design studio. Through our courtship, Aman has loved giving me flowers, and I had a magazine where I was pressing and preserving them. The wedding card actually has those exact flowers incorporated through cyanotype printing. We carried the theme of the florals into the wedding, where we handed out pocket squares to the men and silk scarves to the women.

Food has also been an integral part of our relationship, so we knew we wanted that to be a major highlight at the wedding, not an afterthought. I’ve always envisioned a sit-down dinner, so we risked it and planned a seven-course, two-and-a-half-hour-long sit-down meal for 60 people that was beautifully curated by Prateek Sadhu from Naar. The menu was iterations of our favourite food memories—midnight noodles and some of his signature dishes, like the cauliflower crème brûlée.

A wardrobe of homegrown designers & heirloom jewellery

Aman: For me it was over in a quick one-day trip to Delhi. I gravitated towards Divyam Mehta’s designs because they felt very understated. The devil is truly in the details with the sherwani, which bears an almost patchwork-like embroidery. I had to have it. I’m a person who doesn't wear anything flashy. However, when we visited the Akaaro store, something drew me to the navy-blue chevron fabric with a gold zari undertone and it felt ideal for the reception.

Dhwani: It kind of reminded me of the engravings in the jewellery you make.

Aman: Yeah, maybe that’s why I resonated with it. And then I wore a brooch that I designed myself. It’s a bunch of triangles with these facets engraved on them. For the wedding bandhgala I wore uncut emeralds. Emeralds have always been my favourite stone, and my father converted them into buttons. I also wore a sarpech gifted by my nani, and tiny jadau flower earrings. On the wedding day, my dad’s close friend Pinakin Patel had brought along this beautiful Viren Bhagat brooch that had the same colour of emerald as my buttons and it was actually designed as a photo frame. Somehow we scrambled and got a photo of Dhwani printed and then encased in the brooch. It was a nice surprise during the varmala.

Dhwani: I was very hell-bent on wearing sage green and had designer Jayanti Reddy on my wishlist. When I went to Hyderabad for my appointment, she convinced me to try on a beautiful red piece that we customised in hot pink. I wanted to pair the lehenga with a veil crafted from a sari gifted to my mother by my grandfather, who was a jeweller. It features gold and silver threads with real diamonds and rubies sewn into intricate floral patterns. I wore a jadau set purchased from Bikaner with a shishpatti and maang tikka that were given to my mother by my great-grandmother. The nath I wore is what my grandmother wore at her wedding; it has a quintessential Rajasthani feel. All these beautifully mismatched pieces came together in a way that holds great sentimental value. The purple number on the mehendi was made by a local tailor from Benarasi fabric gifted to me by my mother-in-law during the engagement. For the reception I wore a Kshitij Jalori lehenga with an old-timey velvet blouse. It was important for me to choose designs that age well and pieces I could style differently.

Meeting guests during the celebrations