Parvati Pyarelal and Sony Theakanath turned a transatlantic romance into a Kerala-rooted celebration, bringing their London–New York love story home to Kumarakom. Over two days, they honoured Sony’s Christian traditions and Parvati’s Hindu heritage with a church blessing, full Hindu rites and a lavish sadya, letting Kerala’s backwaters, food and culture define the aesthetic and spirit of their wedding.
Parvati Pyarelal and Sony Theakanath’s relationship began in 2024, when a mutual family friend introduced them while Parvati was living in London and Sony in New York. What followed was a relationship shaped by flights between the two cities, weekends together and, eventually, a life built in New York. For their wedding, they brought their families together in Kumarakom, choosing to celebrate in a way that felt deeply connected to where they came from.
Over two days, the couple brought together Sony’s family traditions and Parvati’s Hindu heritage, beginning with a blessing at Nava Nazareth Church on June 27 and followed by the full Hindu wedding rites and a traditional Kerala sadya the next morning. Kerala also shaped the celebration’s aesthetic, from the backwaters and greenery of Kumarakom to the food and decor.
The same sense of place extended to their wedding wardrobes, with Parvati wearing a Jayanti Reddy sari and her mother’s emerald and diamond jewellery for the ceremony, followed by Tarun Tahiliani and heirloom diamond earrings for the reception. Sony wore a classic silk mundu and kurta for the ceremony and a Sabyasachi bandhgala for the reception.
For a couple whose story began between London and New York, Kumarakom became more than a wedding destination. It was where two families, two traditions and two chapters of their lives could finally exist in the same place.
PP: Our first date technically started over a video call, but the first real one was in London. We started at a restaurant, somehow ended up at a filled-doughnut shop, and then walked the city for hours. One date turned into an entire weekend. We saw each other every day and probably spent more than twenty hours together over those few days.
There was no single cinematic moment when either of us decided this was it. It was how quickly everything felt natural. Despite living in different countries, neither of us questioned whether we wanted to keep seeing each other. The distance felt like a logistical problem to solve rather than a reason not to be together.
PP: I was living in London, so I took full advantage and made Sony walk. Our first proper date turned into hours of walking the city in the cold, and I kept doing it every time he came over. He never once suggested a taxi. When we started spending time in New York, we did exactly the same thing there, except by then it was his city and my turn to follow.
PP: Sony proposed at Top of the Rock at Rockefeller Centre, Manhattan. We went early, when there were very few people around, with New York stretching out behind us. We had both dressed in white, which made the morning feel even more surreal in retrospect.
Sony Theakanath (ST): New York had become an important part of our story. We started our relationship between London and New York, and it became the city where we built our first home together and were civilly married. Having the proposal overlook it felt like a chapter coming full circle.
ST: Most of the romance in our relationship has been in the effort. For much of it, seeing each other meant crossing the Atlantic. We built the relationship around flights between London and New York, rearranging schedules and making a few days together feel like normal life. Looking back, repeatedly choosing to make that distance work was probably the most romantic thing we did.
PP: We had three principles: have fun, do not make it stressful, keep it true to ourselves. Kumarakom served all three, because it let us hold the wedding in Kerala at its finest rather than importing an idea of a wedding from somewhere else.
ST: The biggest was coordinating a wedding across countries. Our lives, families and friends span India, the UK and the US, so almost every decision had an international dimension. There were a huge number of moving pieces, but we tried not to let logistics take over the reason everyone was there in the first place.
PP: Completely, both of us. We made the significant decisions together and split the rest by whoever was better placed to handle it. But planning a Kerala wedding from New York has hard limits, and my parents did an enormous amount of the in-person groundwork: the site visits, the vendor meetings, the hundred small decisions that can only be made by someone standing there. We could not have done it from across an ocean without them.
PP: Kerala itself. We did not want to take an aesthetic from somewhere else and recreate it there. We wanted the landscape, architecture, water, greenery, food and traditions of Kerala to be the aesthetic. The goal was timeless rather than themed, with the setting doing most of the work.
ST: Kumarakom captured the Kerala we wanted our guests to experience: the lake, the greenery and the slower pace of life around the backwaters. Many of our guests were travelling a very long way, and we wanted the place itself to be the reason it was worth it.
PP: For the Kerala ceremony I wore a Jayanti Reddy sari with emerald and diamond jewellery from my mother’s collection. Sony wore a classic silk mundu and kurta with a dupatta from Beena Kannan Couture. For the reception I wore Tarun Tahiliani with heirloom diamond earrings, also my mother’s, and Sony wore a Sabyasachi bandhgala.
At our civil ceremony in New York I wore Ridhi Mehra with jewels by Srishti, and Sony wore Ralph Lauren.
We chose them the way we chose everything else. The Kerala pieces had to belong to Kerala rather than arrive in it, and the New York pieces had to feel like the city we were building a life in.
PP: Both, for different reasons. On June 27 we were blessed at Nava Nazareth Church in Kumarakom, which carried Sony’s family’s traditions. The next morning we sat before the fire for the full Hindu rites, followed by the sadya I grew up with. Neither was shortened to make room for the other. Holding both, in the same place, in front of the same people, was the whole point.
PP: The sadya was non-negotiable, close to thirty dishes on a banana leaf, and it did more to explain Kerala to our guests than anything we could have said. We also built the first day around Kerala games rather than a formal welcome dinner: a snake boat race, tug of war and pot breaking, bride’s side against groom’s side. My side won, which I am contractually obliged to mention.
ST: We let the setting lead. Kumarakom gave us the lake and the greenery, so the decor did not need to work hard. The reception was the one place we allowed ourselves to be bold: red and white stripes, tables of lemons and red blooms, and a wall of fresh roses. The food stayed Keralan throughout. Guests had flown in from London, New York and San Francisco, and we wanted them to eat what we grew up eating.
PP: The reception ran into midnight, which turned out to be Sony’s birthday. I had put together a presentation for it and asked each of his friends to take a particular phase of his life and speak to it, so the night ended with sparklers, champagne, cake, and Sony being narrated back to himself from childhood onward by the people who had been there for each part. He had no idea. It was also the one thing at our wedding I planned entirely without him, which after months of deciding everything together felt like its own small luxury.
PP: Rainmakers planned the wedding and handled the decor. Photography in Kerala by Mindful Memories, and in New York by Doughwanders. Hair and makeup by Samson Lei. The ceremony took place at Kumarakom Lake Resort, with the blessing at Nava Nazareth Church. And my parents, who did far more of the on-the-ground work than anyone reading this will realise.
ST: Euphoric, and finished in the best sense of the word. Not relieved that it was over. More that everything we had been planning across three countries had arrived at a single point and held.
PP: Assign someone whose only job is to look after the two of you. Our planners gave us one person who stayed with us throughout, carrying whatever we needed, appearing with food and water, and producing mango at every break during the long photography sessions. It sounds trivial. It is the single reason we were not exhausted by the evening, and the reason we can still remember the day clearly.
Beyond that, set your principles before you set your budget. Ours were: have fun, do not make it stressful, keep it true to ourselves. Every decision after that either served one of the three or it did not, and it is remarkable how many arguments that saves. Most of what couples agonise over is invisible to guests by the second hour.
PP: We spent the beginning of our relationship measuring our time together in flights and weekends. Now we are looking forward to the opposite: building an ordinary life. Creating a home, building our careers alongside each other, travelling, eventually starting a family, and getting all the far less glamorous everyday moments. After starting across London and New York, there is something very nice about no longer having to plan the next time we will see each other.