A wedding in Sri Lanka with no phones, no priest, and 50 outfits

The bride and the groom are from opposite ends of the world. She is Australian Indian and he is Canadian Indian. For context, that is a 15-hour time difference, at the very least. But tech investor Tanya Raheja and tech founder Kunal Gupta knew they were the one for each other from their very first date.

Back in January 2024, Kunal was holidaying in Sydney and found Tanya on Hinge. A casual coffee hang turned into a walk in the park that finally turned into a date that lasted 11 whole hours. The next morning, Kunal, 40, flew out to Kerala for a three-week-long Ayurvedic retreat, with no access to his phone. Tanya, 35, wasn’t sure if she would hear back from him, all while he was already dreaming of their wedding. When the retreat wrapped up, Kunal changed his flights to fly back to Sydney and put down a deposit on a house, just to be closer to her.

To repeat, this is all from the magic of one date and day together. A true example of “when you know, you know,” the couple was engaged by the end of the year. The whirlwind proposal was just as dreamy: Kunal whisked Tanya away to Hamilton Island and got down on one knee on a private beach. Staying true to the theme, they tied the knot in January 2026 on another beach, this time at Sri Lanka’s Anantara Kalutara Resort. Spread across three days starting with a white-themed welcome party, the entire wedding was strictly a no-phone zone. 

As the internet chats about going analogue, the bride and the groom embody the spirit—neither is on Instagram. That’s only one aspect of the unconventional approach: their ceremony was performed without a priest too. Below, Kunal and Tanya take us through the wedding and how they tailored the rituals to suit their story:

The wedding planning aka the business proposal

Tanya: We wrote a vision statement for our wedding, describing our most important values. The idea was to make sure the wedding felt representative of us. The document was almost like a business proposal.

Kunal: ‘Connection’ was one of the values. That’s where the idea for no phones came in. We wanted people to be present in the moment. ‘Authentic to us’ was another one; we wanted a more self-guided ceremony that blended Indian customs with Western traditions. And ‘fearless’ was one of the values too, which meant not being scared of what others may think. We had the planners print six large signs asking people to put away their phones. Even the emcee at every event reminded them.

The welcome party where everyone wore white

Tanya: I’m from Sydney, so I love the outdoors and the beach. I wanted one of the events to be there. Kunal loves to host white parties; it’s like his MO. So, we brought the two together for our welcome party. We also asked everyone to be barefoot so it feels like a grounding start. There was an inclusive milni too. Instead of just the close family exchanging garlands, we made it about the guests. We had garlands for the girl’s side and the boy’s side with different-coloured flowers. They had to take theirs and exchange it with someone from the other side.

Kunal: It helped people connect with each other. We also had 30 drums set up in a circle. It was a really fun event. Everyone started dancing.

There was also a time capsule

Kunal: Our wedding was the one time in our lives when all our loved ones came together. We had friends fly in from over 15 countries. We set up a time capsule to capture this. People came in and left messages for us. That also put them in a reflective mood—we would keep seeing our friends and family sharing stories with each other.

The sangeet doubled up as a talent night

Tanya: We had 120 people at the wedding, and about 50 had never seen an Indian wedding. But we wanted to make sure the sangeet wasn’t just dancing. Kunal and his extended family did a 12-minute production about him being an AI bot; Kunal’s very obsessed with building AI products right now, so it’s very on-theme. A friend who’s a comedian and actor did a skit based on us. Another friend did a classical music performance.

The groom gets to kiss the bride after the pheras

Tanya: Our families are Indian, but we have grown up in the West and we wanted the wedding to include [elements of] both. So, for example, the jai mala was very important, because it’s a symbol that we’ve seen growing up that signified marriage. Another thing was the vows—when you see couples declare their love, it’s really special. It was also important to pick things that were non-gendered, so we chose to not have a priest and adapt rituals in a way that treated us like equals.

Kunal: From the Hindu ceremony we had the agni and the pheras, but we also had the vows, the ring exchange, and the first kiss.

Tanya: We spent a lot of time designing the ceremony. May, who was our officiant, is this soft, reflective soul. We sat with her and wrote the whole script together.

Even the chefs were flown in from around the world

Kunal: We loved everything about the hotel in Sri Lanka, but the Indian food [there] wasn’t to our taste. Our planners told us about an Indian chef in Amritsar who had done weddings in Sri Lanka. They’re supposed to bring the spices and everything too. And two months later we went to an Indian restaurant in Canada, owned by a family friend. It was incredible modern fusion food, so we told him he had to come on board too.

Tanya: Honestly, he thought we were joking, but Kunal is very passionate about food.

Kunal: In total, we brought in about seven chefs from overseas and there were 150 items on the buffet.

Finally, the outfits

Tanya: The clothing was definitely my department. It was really important that the outfits felt fun and comfortable. I really like Seema Gujral’s designs, so I wore her pieces for the sangeet. And I picked Papa Don’t Preach for the welcome party. For the shaadi, I went to a local store where my cousins bought their wedding lehengas too. For Kunal we made a bunch of custom suits.

Kunal: Yeah, I think we did all our wedding shopping in seven or eight days. We probably got 40 to 50 outfits in total.

Tanya: Yeah, it’s very Kunal. He wasn’t sure which outfit he would like more, so he bought three sangeet outfits and then we picked the final one.