Vasundhara Singh and Yash Malhotra’s love story began on a tennis court at a Kanpur club when they were seven and five. Both belonged to hospitality families from Kanpur. Families that knew of each other, but were technically competitors and never particularly close. The two children crossed paths, grew up and went their separate ways.
“I eventually headed to Stanford, while Yash studied at Cornell. Despite spending years in the US, we lived on opposite coasts and did not meet in person again for more than a decade,” shares Vasundhara.
Then COVID brought both of them back to Kanpur. “COVID finally did what fifteen years couldn’t,” recalls our bride.
Working nocturnal hours for a US-based company at the time, she stepped out one Friday and happened to run into Yash. The two introduced themselves almost as though they had never met before. “I unexpectedly pulled up a chair beside her and stayed there for the rest of the evening. One of my friends even joked that I was behaving like I had met my wife,” reminisces Yash about his first meeting with Vasundhara.
It would prove oddly prophetic. Just not immediately. Vasundhara returned to the US and another two-and-a-half years passed before they saw each other again.
A trip back home in December 2022 finally got them talking properly. What followed were six months of daily phone calls before Yash flew to Delhi to meet Vasundhara off a flight and take her on their first date.
They began dating soon after, but decided to keep the relationship quiet. In a city like Kanpur, where their families had lived for generations and everyone seemed to know everyone, secrecy offered them the chance to figure out their relationship on their own terms.
For Vasundhara, who describes herself as an open book, keeping it under wraps for two years was particularly unusual. It was only when she decided to move back to Kanpur ahead of business school that they finally told their parents.
The response? “Shock and excitement in equal measure,” she says. Nobody had seen the relationship coming. The couple now jokes that their love story is a little like Romeo and Juliet, only with a much happier ending.
Their families formally met in December 2024, followed by a roka in June 2025. In March 2026, they hosted a pre-wedding celebration for more than 1,000 guests in Kanpur.
For the wedding, however, they wanted the opposite.
Vasundhara and Yash wanted a celebration intimate enough for them to actually spend time with their guests. There was also a logistical puzzle to solve.
Vasundhara had lived in the US for over a decade, while many of Yash’s friends from university and New York were based there too. Their families and family friends, meanwhile, were largely in India. The wedding destination needed to work for people travelling from opposite sides of the world.
Budapest entered the conversation almost casually, following a suggestion from one of Vasundhara’s father’s friends. Neither bride nor groom had ever visited the city. But that didn’t stop them.
Yash expresses, “We are instinctive decision-makers and we booked Anantara New York Palace within days of considering Budapest as a destination for our wedding. More importantly, the hotel could accommodate our 350-plus guests under one roof, something that proved surprisingly difficult to find across Europe.”
The city also offered something they did not want to artificially create through décor.
“I didn’t want to fight the city for beauty,” says Vasundhara, adding, “Buda Castle became the visual anchor for our wedding, allowing Budapest’s historic architecture to do much of the talking rather than building elaborate sets around it.”
The couple worked with Mumbai-based wedding planning house F&B to turn that idea into a three-day celebration spread across some of the city’s most striking addresses.
The festivities began on June 19 with Budapest in Bloom, a welcome evening at W Budapest, opposite the Hungarian State Opera. Speeches from Vasundhara’s sister and the couple’s closest friends immediately set the mood for the weekend.
The following afternoon brought India into the heart of their host hotel.
For Buda Bazaar, the mehndi, Anantara New York Palace’s atrium was transformed into a lively Indian marketplace. Stalls were stocked with mirrored potli bags sourced from Jaipur and bangles from Kanpur, giving international guests a chance to take a little piece of India home.
If the earlier functions were intimate and playful, the cocktail called ‘Night at the Castle’ brought the theatre.
Vasundhara and Yash made their entrance down a long illuminated staircase into the courtyard of the Royal Riding Hall. Along the way waited a cast that included a unicyclist, violinist, trumpet player, fire breather and stilt walker before the couple finally walked in to Amy Winehouse’s Valerie.
Inside, the evening became something of a family talent show. “Yash performed Stayin’ Alive with his brothers, while 18 of my closest girlfriends took to the floor. Fifteen of them were attending their first Indian sangeet, but had still memorised the choreography,” recalls the bride.
FloorJaxx performed before DJ Krissh took over the decks. The party continued until sunrise.
By the afternoon of June 21, the celebrations had shifted towards the Danube.
The baraat assembled at IDA by Danube before making its way towards Várkert Bazár at Buda Castle. The procession spilled onto the public road outside the venue, which had been closed for the occasion. But Budapest did not simply remain a backdrop. Tourists and locals began joining the celebration along the way.
Vasundhara made her entrance down the steps of Várkert Bazár, first behind her friends and then her family, towards the varmala overlooking the road outside.
The ceremony itself was deliberately kept short and personal. Modern notes and promises the couple had written for one another were woven into the traditional pheras.
Dinner followed by the riverside, accompanied by a performance from Jeffrey Iqbal, one of Vasundhara’s favourite artists, who moved between Indian and Western medleys.
For all the scale of the weekend, her favourite memory is considerably simpler.
Walking towards Yash and seeing him waiting for her, “smiling ear to ear”.
Vasundhara’s wardrobe changed with the mood of each celebration rather than following one fixed aesthetic.
For the mehndi, she chose Payal Singhal, matching the more playful energy of Buda Bazaar. As the celebrations moved into the grandeur of the Royal Riding Hall for the cocktail, she switched to Faraz Manan, while Yash wore Tom Ford.
For the wedding day, however, Vasundhara wanted something deeply personal.
She worked with House of Kotwara on a fully custom creation, co-created with the label’s creative director, Sama. Instead of treating her jewellery and outfit as separate elements, the design began with the ruby red of her jewels. That colour was then picked up through tiny embroidered flowers across the lehenga, creating a subtle visual conversation between the two.
Yash complemented her in a Sabyasachi sherwani for the ceremony.
It was a fitting final look for a wedding that constantly moved between worlds: Kanpur and Budapest, India and America, old friendships and new families, grand venues and personal moments.
Well, COVID may have done what 15 years couldn’t and Budapest gave them somewhere to celebrate the start of a new chapter.