Nidhi Sunil and Noah Katz-Appel’s Kerala wedding was a love letter to community

Nidhi Sunil and Noah Katz-Appel didn’t exactly meet cute so much as meet, part ways, do a lot of emotional homework, and then find each other again when the timing finally made sense. They first crossed paths at a yoga studio in 2018. “I got her number at the studio, but she wasn’t really into me. So, she ghosted me for a while and then we ended up reconnecting as friends in 2022,” recalls Katz-Appel. The romance felt less like a whirlwind and more like a decision. “It wasn’t about romanticising being in love or a surprise that this relationship turned into a long-standing situation,” says Sunil. “It was about who I wanted to do life and the hard stuff with.”

That clarity shaped everything that followed, including their two weddings. “I wanted to hang out, have a good time as a guest at my own wedding,” says the Kerala-born, New York-based model. What unfolded was a multi-day, multi-city celebration that felt less like an event and more like a reflection of how they live: intentionally, communally, and very much on their own terms.

An on-brand non-surprise proposal

Noah: I ended up proposing in Kerala while we were scouting wedding venues. We stepped onto this property and immediately knew—this is it.

Nidhi: He asked me if I wanted to be surprised or not, and I pulled up some references because I knew what cut I wanted for the ring, but the rest was up to him really. It wasn’t like a full-on surprise either, which I loved. He just was like, I won’t tell you when it’s happening. But I knew.

Noah: I always had it in the back of my mind that if we were going to do an official proposal, it was going to be someplace special. I set it up on a boat in the backwaters of Kerala, right where we’d end up getting married.

A park, a pin drop, and a chuppah

Noah: We ended up getting married for the first time just a year into our relationship with a small Jewish ceremony in my birthplace, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Nidhi: We had a little celebration in a park where a lot of Noah’s family’s threshold moments are celebrated. We had the same Jewish cantor that married his mom the second time, his brother, and a few close friends there. We didn’t hire a stylist. I did my own makeup. But we had an amazing Bangladeshi photographer—Amir Hamja—document the day for us.

Noah: Just a few weeks before, we just told a bunch of our friends, hey, we’re gonna get married. We just sort of popped up at the park on the day, found a spot, dropped the pin, and had our friends meet us there.

Planning a wedding like you’re producing a festival

Nidhi: The second wedding was nothing if not organised. A lot of my close friends who had never been to India before were attending, so we wanted to make a special container for them to have an amazing experience. The way we approached it was as if we were the creators and we were inviting our community to co-create and have a journey with us.

Noah: A big influence on the Indian wedding was also Burning Man. We’ve gone for the last couple of years; I’ve gone for the last six years—and it’s where we’ve found a lot of our community. Co-creation, expression, and inclusion are some of the values that drive it and sort of permeate through our community, and I wanted the wedding to reflect that.

Nidhi: It took a year to plan. Noah’s a little bit in event production. I’m very familiar with it because I’ve produced photoshoots. But this was probably my biggest production ever. When I was talking to my wedding planners, they were like, well, you’re gonna be in hair and makeup for at least three hours before every event. And I was like, absolutely not, you know? Elton [Fernandez] did my makeup, and he’s done it so often that it was super nice not to sit in a chair constantly. Our community really showed up for us, and it was better than I could have imagined.

The long way to “I do”

Noah: We invited a bunch of friends to come to what we called our extended itinerary spread out over three different locations over 11 days. It ended up being 50 of our close friends. We started in Goa with this big four-day New Year celebration on the beach. Then a few days in Fort Kochi at the Biennale. And then we all bussed down together to Kumarakom Lake Resort for the wedding.

Breaking ice, breaking bubbles

Noah: The official festivities started with the haldi on the first day in the presidential suite of this beautiful heritage building with a pool overlooking the lake.

Nidhi: We were both in urlis. With weddings, people choose to contemporise every single element because they’ve probably seen it all, but I find that there’s something really nice about traditions. We had a veena player, a tabla player, and a flute player in this small space. And we also realised there were a lot of Jewish traditions that intersect with Hindu traditions—they also have a purification ritual before the wedding where they have to bathe in a tub.

Noah: It was beautiful because the space was so small; it felt like everyone was right on top of us. Following the haldi, we did a sunset mehendi by the pool overlooking the lake. Our friend started deejaying, people started dancing, and there was a dance party with people circling the pool. We also had a quieter moment during the mehendi when a friend took everyone through a connection exercise to break the ice.

Nidhi: A friend of mine who’s a facilitator led people through an exercise where everyone found themselves in a group of three people they didn’t know and had to share some intimate, vulnerable things about themselves. It was really interesting to watch my Indian dad and grandmother talk to friends of ours who were tech entrepreneurs; one of my friends is a dominatrix. It could have been polarising just because of how different the world is, but it was amazing.

Trading the sangeet for a cultural night

Noah: We wanted the first night to be very quiet and about arts and culture, so instead of a sangeet we had a cultural night and called it Kala Sandhya. The second night was going to be our night to party.

Nidhi: Our friends Nākaloka (Monica Dogra and Victorien) and a trio of amazing singers—Shruthi Veena Vishwanath, Shruteendra Katagadei, and Babui, who specialise in Nirguni, Bhakti, and Sufi music—performed. And then we had the local Kathakali school in Fort Kochi come and perform as well.

Two traditions, one heart

Nidhi: The next morning was the ceremony. We had a Hindu ceremony with a few Jewish elements, so we printed a little card for our guests to understand what was going on.

Noah: Before the Hindu ceremony started, we had the same Jewish cantor who had married us in Cambridge come up and do a blessing. I wore a tallit—the same Jewish shawl that created the chuppah we got married under in Cambridge. I also found this hand-embroidery shop in Jew Town in Fort Kochi, and they created beautiful silk handmade kippots (caps) for the guests.

Nidhi: I walked down to three musicians playing the harp and guitar, and they sang an acoustic version of ‘Can’t Help Falling in Love with You’. I chose to walk down the aisle alone, because I was like I’m not a 20-year-old bride. It was my way of telling myself I got this.

Noah: We broke a glass at the end, and later at the reception some of my Jewish friends broke into song with the Hava Nagila and we were lifted on chairs.

Nidhi: At the reception, we made people do Bollywood dances. Basically, we did the sangeet after the reception dinner and speeches. It was so sweet how everybody just learned all the choreo and showed up. Noah and I danced to ‘Jalebi Baby’.

Supporting young talent

Nidhi: The outfits were all styled by Akshay Tyagi. He’s a friend from way back. I wanted to find younger people who were doing cool stuff and pushing boundaries. They’re my age, my contemporaries, and they’re labels that may not have the resources that bigger brands have, so that’s kind of where that came from.

Indian brides almost always wear red, but it was also a conscious choice for me—I don’t like the idea of brides having to be pure or virginal, so I chose a bright red lehenga by Jade by Monica & Karishma. Noah wore an ivory bandhgala with jade buttons.

A pocket of joy in a complicated world

Noah: If there’s one theme to pull out of this wedding, it would be activating all our insanely talented friends that are world-class in what they do.

Nidhi: It was 100 per cent not just about us. It was about creating a space for love and community to come together in a small pocket in time where it’s such a hard moment with everything that’s going on. It was everything and more than I could have hoped for.