An Istanbul wedding where the baraat arrived by yacht

Every great modern love story has a chaos test—the trip where everything goes wrong and you find out if you’re dating for the time being or a future spouse. For Sagiri Gidwani and Ankur Patel, that test arrived early: a first holiday to Antigua that featured a flat tyre, torrential rainstorms, and the sudden realisation that they were the only brown, under-65 guests at their hotel. “It was a series of unfortunate events,” Sagiri laughs. “We were just laughing the entire time,” Ankur adds.

That ability to find humour in the unplanned would become a defining theme of their relationship—from Omicron-era puppy play dates with their mini Bernedoodle in Central Park to wine trips through Piedmont, a friend-moon in Tuscany, and eventually, a rain-soaked proposal at a château in the south of France.

So, when it came to planning their wedding, the New York-based couple took a different approach: to plan meticulously and celebrate freely. The result? A four-day destination wedding in Istanbul featuring a yacht baraat, a Moroccan-oasis-inspired sangeet, and a palace reception that ended at 5 am. Below, they take The Nod through it all.

Planning the proposal

Ankur: I figured out the ring situation in the fall with help from her sisters. I had a whole spreadsheet where I had sketched out how the day would go.

Sagiri: I was in Milan for work and we were planning this trip to the south of France. But Ankur kind of framed it like his birthday trip. So, I thought it was going to be his celebration.

Ankur: We were at the Château Dior (Château de La Colle Noire) and I really wanted to propose in this sculpture garden. But on that day, it kept pouring. The hotel is kind of built into this cliff, so the cobblestones and staircases get very slippery when it rains.

Sagiri: We got ready for dinner and I was wearing heels. And he was like, “Well, why don’t we go for a walk in the garden?” to which I replied, “Why don’t we just hang by the bar and go straight to dinner?”. But he insisted that we go for a walk and we didn’t really know where we were going because the hotel was also a maze. I was really annoyed.

Ankur: I was holding an umbrella and texting the photographer on the side because she set up in a different location and I was freaking out. We finally got to the covered area. I couldn't see the photographer anywhere, so I just got down on one knee.

Sagiri: Then I saw two people running toward us with an umbrella and I was so confused. I realised it was the photographer and assistant sprinting up to try to catch us in the moment.

Ankur: It was just hilarious. The rain stopped and the clouds opened up literally five minutes later. It didn’t go according to plan, but I wouldn’t trade it for anything.

Planning the wedding

Ankur: Originally, our moms had gone to Rajasthan to scope out venues there. We wanted a place that also felt like us.

Sagiri: We’re both Indian and we’ve spent summers all our lives there. But when we saw our venue in Istanbul, we loved the blend of heritage and modernity and that we could also do the type of events that we wanted to do. And Istanbul, as a city, is great. Plus, it’s a good central point too for people to travel.

The best thing about the planning process is that we’re both very type A; we both love a spreadsheet and need an agenda for every meeting. Both Ankur and I were very involved and took ownership of certain elements of the planning. Ankur was handling music and other logistics. I work at Ralph Lauren Home, so design and decor are very important to me. It all took about 10 months of planning.

Ankur: Every Sunday was spent on calls with the wedding planner and our parents and working out details. I remember my friends would ask me, why are you gone every Sunday? How hard can this be? But someone told me it’s the one time in your life where you’re going to have all your friends and family in one place, so make sure you’re invested in it.

The arrival in Istanbul

Sagiri: The wedding started with the welcome dinner at Madhu’s [a restaurant at Swissôtel The Bosphorus] and the night was a lot longer than we anticipated.

Ankur: It went on till 3 am. We had a Darbuka performer after dinner, which got the party started and everyone was on the dance floor. The next day was free for people to explore Istanbul during the day. In the evening, all our guests got picked up by boat and sailed over to the Mandarin Oriental, where we had our sangeet on the terrace.

Sagiri: The decor was inspired by a Moroccan oasis, so we had open cabana lounge seating, hookahs, lanterns, and draped fabrics along the ceiling. It had a cool, loungy vibe. Our entrance for the sangeet was to this song we had just heard, called ‘Yala Habibi’. It’s very popular now but it became like the soundtrack of the wedding. They’d play that every night on the dance floor, and everyone just vibed to it.

Ankur: It’s like one core memory for everyone.

Sagiri: People would send us that song weeks later being like, I’m in my Pilates class vibing to this song.

The baraat on the yacht

Ankur: I’ve been to a lot of Indian weddings, and the traditional baraat never felt very personal to me. So, we got all my cousins and my closest friends—about 25 to 30 of us—to basically take this 45-minute boat ride to the venue. I got to talk to everyone; we danced together. It was like my little pre-party. We got off the boat, entered, and my whole family was there. That was probably the moment when I was the most overwhelmed.

Sagiri: Meanwhile, my bridesmaids and I were hanging out in the room, having champagne and getting the nerves down. I almost spilled an entire iced coffee on my lehenga one minute before stepping out. Thankfully, it just missed my lehenga.

In traditional Indian weddings, brothers walk the bride down the aisle with the phoolon ki chadar. I don’t have any brothers, and I’m super close to my two sisters—they’re literally my best friends. So, I had my sisters walk me down to the mandap. The ceremony was right on the Bosphorus. We were all surrounded by water and it was breezy, sunny, and breathtakingly beautiful.

Ankur: A flautist played during the ceremony. Initially, we had mixed feelings about it. But that was one thing my parents were pushed hard on, and it ended up being a great decision.

Sagiri: That evening, we had a sundowner cocktail hour outside on the terrace at the Çırağan Palace. We had violinists play classical music as the guests entered, and then the main reception area was also outdoors. We went with an enchanted garden theme with greenery and chandeliers everywhere. The tables were candlelit. We had a seated dinner where each table was named after cities that were meaningful to us. Once everyone was seated, we did our entrance to ‘Bitter Sweet Symphony’ played on the violin.

Ankur: We then did our first dance to an acoustic version of ‘Lifetime’ by Justin Bieber—Sagiri’s a huge fan. People gave speeches, everyone was crying, but we also wanted everyone to get to the dance floor soon and had our band Paris-Select play.

Sagiri: They were incredible. They even threw in a couple of Bollywood songs, which was so fun for the family.

The outfits

Sagiri: I went to India three times in a year from New York, which was hard to plan with work. I knew I wanted to wear Sabyasachi for the ceremony. But I didn’t really know what I wanted to wear for the other functions. I found my wedding lehenga on my first trip to Mumbai. It was a sage-y, celadon colour. I was picturing ivory initially, but the moment I wore it, I was like, this is it. We went to Mumbai and Delhi on the second trip together.

Ankur: I knew what I wanted—I don’t really like a lot of embellishment, so I wanted something classic with a bit of threadwork. The sherwani that I ended up with was perfect because it had a stole with a bunch of work on it but didn’t feel over the top.

For the reception, well, because she works at Ralph Lauren, we did a Purple Label tux. Thankfully, that was in New York. For the sangeet, I had seen this outfit at Varun Bahl online.

I had shown it to Sagiri, her sister, and our moms. Everyone was like, it looks good on the runway but it’s not gonna translate. So, we went around to a bunch of stores, and I hated all of it. Then as soon as we reached the Varun Bahl store and I tried on that same look, everyone was like, wow, this looks great. That outfit was actually my favourite out of everything.

Sagiri: For my reception outfit, I wanted a mermaid silhouette, but I couldn’t find it anywhere on my first two trips. I was really freaking out. Luckily, my sister was in India for work in March and she ended up finding my reception outfit at Natasha Dalal. She tried on a similar version, and I had to give them custom elements and measurements over a video call, which was very stressful. I went and tried it in May, and it fit perfectly.

It’s always better to know what designers you want and go to them straight. If you go to multi-brand stores, it’s impossible. It’s fine as a wedding guest, but for your own wedding, at least for us, it was just easier to shop with the designers directly.