"Home is where the heart is"—this adage could not be truer for Krisha Kothari and Varil Shah’s wedding. The couple who met on Hinge, decided to get married after Varil proposed on a trip to Mallorca, Spain with a quiet, intimate setup by the sea.
They tied the knot in a beautiful and small, yet meaningful wedding, on the terrace of the groom’s home in Mumbai. No multi-day celebrations, no outdoor venues or destination flights, the couple kept it simple with their big day only among their closest, a quiet signing ceremony and just eight people in attendance to witness it. If your first thought is, ‘wait, how is it even possible to pare cut down the wedding guest list?’, the couple has a perfect answer to that. They take Manifest into their wedding with a reminder that sometimes, the most beautiful celebrations are the ones that feel intimate.
Take us into how you first met and your Mallorca proposal.
Krisha Kothari (KK): We met on Hinge in March 2023. The conversation felt easy from the beginning and there was none of that feeling of having to force things along. My first impression of Varil was that he was very sure of himself, but also easy to talk to.
Varil Shah (VS): I remember feeling very comfortable around Krisha quite quickly. There was an ease to the conversation and it did not feel overly formal or like either of us was trying too hard to impress the other.
There was not one dramatic moment where we suddenly decided this was it. It happened quite naturally. I wanted the proposal to feel like us. I knew I did not want a huge setup, an audience or anything overly performative. Mallorca already had this incredible sense of calm and the sea made the setting feel naturally beautiful, so I planned something small and private by the water.
Was there a moment when you both realised you wanted a wedding that was intimate rather than traditional in scale?
(KK): We had spoken about weddings fairly early on and realised that neither of us felt particularly excited by the idea of having hundreds of people at ours. We both grew up around very large Indian weddings, so we knew exactly what that kind of celebration could look like. When we began actually thinking about our own wedding, we kept coming back to the same question: who do we genuinely want standing beside us when we get married? Once we looked at it that way, the answer became very simple.
You both grew up attending large Indian weddings. What did you learn from those experiences that influenced your own wedding?
(VS): Large Indian weddings can be incredible, but we also saw how easily the couple can become almost secondary to the scale of the event. There are hundreds of people to greet, multiple functions, constant movement and so much happening around you that sometimes you barely have the chance to experience the actual moment. That was probably the biggest thing we took away from those experiences. We did not want to spend our wedding worrying about schedules, logistics or whether we had spoken to every guest. We wanted to actually remember getting married.
You've shared how decision wasn’t about the budget as you mentioned. So, what prompted it?
(KK): It was entirely about what felt meaningful to us. Our parents had very generously planned and saved for a much larger wedding, so budget was never the reason for keeping it small. In fact, choosing an eight-person wedding was probably harder to explain because people naturally assumed there had to be another reason behind it. There really was not. We simply did not want a big wedding. We cared much more about the experience of the day than the scale of it. We wanted to be present, relaxed and surrounded only by the people closest to us.
How did you arrive at the number eight?
(KK): The number eight happened because we drew a very clear line: only our immediate blood relatives. Once we decided that was the rule, there was actually very little room for ambiguity. We knew that if we started making exceptions, even for one or two people, it would become impossible to know where to stop. So rather than thinking of it as choosing eight people out of everyone we loved, we thought of it as keeping the ceremony itself strictly to the immediate family.
Your families had initially envisioned a much larger celebration. How did you explain your decision to them?
(VS): There were definitely conversations because a very small wedding is unusual, particularly in Indian families. Our parents naturally imagined something larger, especially because weddings are also an important moment for the families. We understood where they were coming from, but we were also quite headstrong about what we wanted. We kept explaining that this was not about excluding people or reducing the importance of the occasion.
The ceremony was simply restricted to immediate blood relatives. Once people understood that there were only eight people in total, rather than eight people being selected from a much larger circle, it was easier to understand that nobody was being personally excluded. Eventually, they understood that it was genuinely the wedding we wanted rather than a compromise.
Were there any traditions or expectations you consciously chose to let go of?
(KK): The biggest expectation we let go of was the idea that an Indian wedding had to be a multi-day celebration with several events and a large guest list. We did not feel the need to have functions simply because they are normally part of a wedding schedule. We stripped everything back to the actual wedding ceremony and focused on the traditions within that ceremony that meant something to us. We also let go of the pressure to make the wedding feel like a production.
Conversely, which traditions were non-negotiable for you?
(VS): Even though the format of the wedding was unconventional, we still wanted the ceremony itself to feel rooted in tradition. We wanted to get married properly, surrounded by our parents and immediate family, and we wanted the cultural significance of the wedding to remain intact. Krisha choosing a traditional red sari was also part of that. We were modern in the way we structured the wedding, but we did not want to remove the sense of tradition from the moment itself.
What made Varil’s family home the setting for the wedding? Was it important to have the sea and skyline?
(KK): Once we decided to have such a small wedding, having it at home almost felt obvious. Varil’s home terrace already had this extraordinary view over the sea and the Mumbai skyline, and it felt much more personal than hiring a venue for eight guests. The view was definitely important, but the emotional connection mattered even more. We were getting married in a place that was already part of our family’s life. It also gave us this amazing feeling of being right in the middle of Mumbai while somehow being completely removed from it.
We began around sunset, so everything initially had this very soft, warm natural light. As the ceremony continued, the candles became more visible and the lights across Mumbai slowly appeared behind us. The terrace had gone from soft and airy to incredibly intimate and candlelit.
Do share a little about the decor you chose. Was it meant to be minimal?
(VS): Yes, we wanted the décor to be intentionally understated. The view was already such a strong part of the setting that we did not want to compete with it. We used predominantly white flowers and greenery around the ceremony space, with lots of candles and red rose petals. The white kept everything very soft and timeless, while the rose petals connected beautifully with Krisha’s red sari.
From your families in peach, ivory and muted pink and you and Varil in red ivory, was it a pre-decided colour palette?
(KK): Yes, the family palette was coordinated quite intentionally. We wanted everyone around us to be in soft colours such as peach, blush, ivory and muted pink. It complemented the white floral setting beautifully and also meant that our outfits naturally stood apart.
I wore a traditional red Sabyasachi sari and Varil wore an ivory Manish Malhotra kurta with gold embroidery. For me, wearing red was important because despite doing the wedding differently in almost every other way, I still wanted to feel like a traditional Indian bride.
With only eight guests and every person part of your innermost circle, what did that intimacy mean to you?
(VS): It meant that every person standing around us had been part of our lives long before the wedding and would continue being part of them long after it. There was something incredibly comforting about looking around during the ceremony and recognising every single face as family. We did not have to divide our attention between hundreds of people. We could hear what our parents were saying, notice their expressions and actually experience those little moments that can otherwise disappear in a large wedding. That intimacy is probably what we value most when we look back at the day.
Why did you choose to move to Taj Lands End for dinner rather than continue the celebration at home?
(VS): Because we wanted the home ceremony to remain exactly that: a short, intimate wedding ceremony. The entire event at home lasted roughly an hour. We had champagne and a few finger snacks on the terrace after the ceremony, and then all eight of us went to Masala Bay at Taj Lands End for dinner.
It allowed the evening to have two very distinct parts. The terrace was for the emotional and ceremonial moment, and dinner afterwards felt almost like a family going out to celebrate together. Instead of having a large wedding buffet or extending the event unnecessarily, we ended the day sitting around one table together. That felt very us.
For both Krisha and Varil look back, there is one favourite snaphshot that they love from their wedding. Krisha says, "It would be the photograph of the two of us standing together on the terrace just as the light is changing, with our families around us, the rose petals in the air and Mumbai stretching out behind us. That one frame captures almost everything we wanted the wedding to be: our families, our home, the city we live in, the traditional clothes, and this tiny celebration happening against an enormous skyline. There are only a handful of people in the photograph, but the moment itself feels incredibly full."