Day 1 of a Luxury Indian Wedding – The Welcome Dinner

I am going to take you through, in this post, the first evening of a Luxury Indian Wedding, which was the Welcome Dinner, explaining what we did, what inspired us, the builds, the results and show you some imagery.

Day 1 of a Luxury Indian Wedding – The Welcome Dinner

In February 2024, we were chosen by a wonderful family to create and spearhead their third daughter’s Luxury Indian wedding.

Being their last daughter to marry, they wanted something extraordinary, that their guests would not have seen before, a way to “mic-drop” out of hosting weddings for their beloved daughters.

As you may know, if you are reading this, at La Fête, we love a challenge, and in October 2024, the week of the celebrations arrived.

Are you ready to be immersed in an opulent Indian wedding welcome dinner?

Being a 500 person strong guestlist, 3-day luxury wedding, we needed to book two hotels for all the guests: Coworth Park and The Four Seasons Hampshire, which the latter was the main base for both families and is where we ended up building 2 out of the 3 marquees for all of the events (which you will find out about more in following blogs…).

The bigger marquee at the FSH (Four Seasons Hampshire) was built over 10 days to be the stage of the Welcome Dinner event on the Friday evening and then be transformed into the location for the Sangeet the following night.

As guests were arriving from across the world throughout the day on Friday, checking-in to one of the two fabulous hotels, our bride and groom were with their families enjoying and cherishing time through rituals, henna, and preparation for the evening ahead.

As 90% of the guests had travelled in internationally, we had decided to make sure that each event had a quintessential Britishness to it, with, of course an Indian flavour to it to mirror the couple’s heritage.

In this instance, the Welcome Dinner became an ode to James Bond, the famous British spy. A sultry, textured velour salon, where blacks, burgundies, pinks and crisp whites blend to create a sophisticated and eye-catching ambiance.

We were very careful to not make this cheesy though, and turn it into a cheesy take on Bond. We made sure that the nods were subtle, that the mood and all details reflected the direction and inspiration.

From the tasseled bar lamps to the coded bar menus, everything was mirroring the theme. The dress-code, was obviously black tie, a perfect way to embrace our couple’s western education and the fact that they live in London.

Bond Inspired Coded Bar Menu for an Opulent Indian Wedding Welcome Dinner

The evening was entitled “From London with Love”, yet another wink to the famous bond novel and film.

Our couple, although both vegetarians, were avid “foodies” and therefore wanted to make sure that the whole 3 days of the multi-venue wedding, food and drink would be available constantly, at any time, and nearly anywhere!

This of course meant that the catering at the party itself was stellar! Headed by the incredible Chef Ritu Dalmia, the buffet of food included all kinds of Indian specialty dishes but also starred some pop-ups of our couple’s favourite restaurants from the UK, who were serving their star dishes.

The set-up and flow of the space in the marquee, was a mix of lounge areas, many, many buffets, and scattered tables that were used to eat and then would be re-set within the blink of an eye for the next set of people to sit and eat.

The flow of a Luxury Indian Wedding is not the same as some western weddings. There is a constant ebb and flow between eating, mingling, dancing, eating some more. It’s much more free flowing rather than the more commonly spread rigid western timeline of a wedding day.

There was of course a very large stage, and even bigger dancefloor to allow the party to truly get started!

That evening, the entertainment was flown in specially from India, a band called Best Kept Secret, that again blend the Indian classics and the Western hits, making it the perfect backdrop for the first evening.

The party continued until 01:00am when we needed to move the crowd onto the after-party area in the ballroom of the hotel.

As soon as the final guest had gone down the hill that the marquee was perched on, an army of suppliers took over the space to start the transformation of the space to set the tone for the Sangeet that would be starting that same evening at 6pm.