The couple who planned a wedding like a mission statement
Sabena Suri Deora and her husband Chiraag Deora are, by their own admission, deeply Type A people. So when it came to planning a three-day wedding in Rome, they didn't start by browsing venues or flipping through lookbooks. They sat down together and listed their top three priorities, then distilled them into a single mission statement that would guide every decision that followed.
The result was what they describe as "a love letter to Rome" — nine months in the making, built in close collaboration with wedding planner Anna Grimaldi of SposiaMovi. The Deoras grew up six houses apart in San Francisco, met as fourth-grade carpool buddies, became best friends, and only started dating 22 years into knowing each other. Their guests had watched the whole story unfold. The couple felt a real responsibility to make the celebration worth the journey.
The surprise venue game that guests turned competitive
Skipping hotel banquets entirely, the Deoras chose three iconic Rome locations — and told nobody which venue was being used until the morning of each event. The welcome party unfolded at Caffè delle Arti inside the National Gallery of Modern Art, dressed up as an outdoor Italian market complete with Aperol spritzes, ten varieties of wood-fired pizza, and a Nutella pizza for dessert. The sangeet took place at Villa Miani, a hilltop property with sweeping panoramic views of the city at sunset. The wedding ceremony and reception were held at Castello Orsini-Odescalchi in Bracciano — a 15th-century medieval castle on a lake, perhaps best known internationally as the site of Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes' wedding.
Guests, it turned out, started placing bets on each day's location. "We later heard that guests made a game out of it, and were taking bets trying to guess the venues," Chiraag recalled. The surprise format did something clever: it gave every event its own sense of occasion and anticipation, rather than letting the whole weekend blur into one long celebration.
Personalisation in the details — from vows to welcome bags
The Deoras layered in personal touches at every turn. Chiraag arrived at his baraat on a white Vespa, flanked by dhol players — a neat, joyful collision of Indian wedding tradition and Roman street life. The ceremony was non-denominational, officiated by a friend, and included two poetry readings before the couple read their own vows. Each guest's menu at the sit-down dinner carried a handwritten note on the back, addressed specifically to them.
The invitation suite — created with Lights Factory — doubled as a mini city guide, with a map of Rome marking the couple's favourite spots for pizza, pasta and cocktails. A custom newspaper narrating their relationship was displayed on newsstands at the market-themed welcome party, designed by Ceremony Club. A build-your-own welcome bag station stocked with pasta, chocolates, Pellegrino and hangover kits sent guests home with something genuinely useful. Sabena, a stylist and co-founder of gifting company Boxfox, also created mood boards with specific dress codes for guests at each event — the couple themselves wore muted tones at the welcome party while guests dressed in bright colours, Sabyasachi and Sawan Gandhi for the sangeet, Tarun Tahiliani for the ceremony, and Shantnu & Nikhil for the reception.
Her wedding lehenga in champagne with pearl detailing and an off-shoulder blouse was perhaps the most intimate detail of all: the tulle dupatta was embroidered with Swarovski crystals for a dewdrop effect, the wedding date, and the Italian phrase *sei sempre stato tu* — "it was always you." It landed even more powerfully when Chiraag's vows echoed the same sentiment: "It wasn't you or someone. It was you or no one."
Why this matters for a wedding banquets audience in India
The Deora wedding is a useful case study for anyone rethinking what a multi-day Indian wedding celebration can look like — even if Rome isn't on the table. A few ideas worth borrowing:
The surprise venue format works precisely because it treats guests as participants rather than an audience. Each reveal becomes a shared moment. In Indian weddings, where mehendi, sangeet, and the main ceremony are often held across different locations anyway, staging small surprises — a venue announcement on the morning of, or a sealed envelope with location details — could add genuine excitement without much extra effort.
Personalised touches at scale are achievable. Printing a guest-specific note on the back of a menu, or curating a welcome bag with locally relevant items (think regional snacks, a miniature of a local spirit, a hand-drawn city map), costs less than an additional décor element but tends to be what guests remember longest.
Finally, the Deoras' mission statement approach — defining priorities before making a single booking — is genuinely practical advice for couples (and their planners) who feel overwhelmed by the sheer volume of decisions a big Indian wedding demands. Knowing what you're optimising for makes every vendor conversation faster and every trade-off easier to resolve.