Shreeya & Aswin’s Wedding in Sri Lanka: Behind the Scenes with Cherish Luxury Weddings

Kavisha CherishLuxury

Sep 8

7 min read

Some weddings are defined by the place they take you to.

For Shreeya and Aswin, that place was Sri Lanka.

An intimate destination celebration for family and close friends travelling from India, Singapore and beyond, their wedding unfolded over two days and across distinctly different settings. From the mehendi at Lunuganga to an oceanfront sangeet at Jetwing Saman Villas, and finally the Hindu wedding ceremony beneath the trees at Lunuganga, each celebration had its own character while remaining part of one considered experience.

For us at Cherish Luxury Weddings, the beauty of the wedding was in bringing all of those moving parts together. An Indian wedding, but not one removed from its destination. A Sri Lankan setting, but one shaped around the couple rather than imposed upon them.

The result was a celebration that felt personal to Shreeya and Aswin, while allowing Sri Lanka to remain present throughout the wedding weekend.

A wedding shaped by its destination

When couples travel to Sri Lanka to get married, the destination becomes more than a backdrop.

It becomes part of the wedding.

The landscape, architecture, food, hospitality and rhythm of the island all have the potential to shape how guests experience the celebration. Our role is to find that balance: to create a wedding that belongs entirely to the couple, while allowing the destination to quietly make its mark.

For Shreeya and Aswin, Lunuganga was an especially natural beginning.

Bawa’s estate does not need much added to it. Its gardens, water, architecture and shifting views already create a visual language of their own. Rather than competing with that character, the planning became about knowing when to add, when to refine and when to leave the landscape alone.

We first connected with Shreeya over a WhatsApp call in August 2025. She was planning her wedding for that November and hadn't yet booked a single vendor, but what she did know, with complete certainty, was that she wanted at least one of her celebrations at Geoffrey Bawa's Lunuganga in Bentota.

She and Aswin had fallen in love with Sri Lanka, and that feeling became the starting point for everything that followed.

Within the week, the two of them flew down. We spent that visit together at Lunuganga and Jetwing Saman Villas, walking the grounds and locking in both venues, with appointments already scheduled alongside our main vendors, hair and makeup, photography and videography, and florals, so decisions could be made in real time.

What stayed with us was the warmth between them. Shreeya knew exactly what she wanted, and Aswin's wish was simple: that their guests experience Sri Lanka exactly as they had experienced it themselves.

When we met him, all he said was that whatever Shreeya asked for, we were to make sure it happened. That clarity shaped the creative direction from the start: understated decor that felt like an extension of the properties, local floral elements, earthy tones and nothing overly produced.

From mehendi to mandap

The beauty of a destination wedding is that no two celebrations need to feel the same.

For Shreeya and Aswin, the wedding moved through a series of distinct experiences, each designed around its setting, its purpose and the people gathered for it.

The celebrations began with the mehendi at Lunuganga, where the gardens provided a naturally lush setting for an afternoon of colour, music and celebration. The design introduced warmth through saffron, marigold and blush tones, allowing the surrounding greenery and Bawa's landscape to remain central.

That evening, the celebrations moved to Jetwing Saman Villas for a sunset soiree by the ocean. The mood shifted with the setting: the gardens gave way to the sea, and the evening became more atmospheric, with candlelight, performances, music and a sense of anticipation for the wedding that would follow.

The following morning brought everyone back to Lunuganga for the Hindu ceremony. Beneath the estate's trees, the mandap was integrated into the garden, creating a setting that felt ceremonial without overwhelming the landscape.

The celebration then continued with the Thali lunch, bringing everyone together over a traditional meal served on banana leaves.

This was a two-day celebration rather than the usual multi-day sprawl, which brought its own discipline to the planning.

Day one was the mehendi at Lunuganga followed by the sunset soiree at Jetwing Saman Villas, and day two was the traditional ceremony at Lunuganga followed by the Thali lunch.

Every transition, from the colour and energy of the mehendi to the ocean air of the evening to the quiet of the ceremony the next morning, had to be considered down to the hour. Guest movement between the two properties and vendors moving between venues also had to happen without ever being seen to happen. Food carried particular importance.

Shreeya wanted her guests to taste Sri Lankan ingredients while still feeling completely at home in South Indian flavours. We therefore ran three tasting sessions and, at her request, flew our chef to India to experience an authentic Thali service firsthand: how it is served hot, how the banana leaf is laid, even the containers it is cooked and carried in.

We brought some of that same equipment back to Sri Lanka so the lunch could feel true to what she grew up with and familiar to their guests.

For the planning team, each event had to work independently while also feeling like part of the same story.

That meant considering the transition between venues, the changing pace of each celebration, guest movement, styling, entertainment, ceremony requirements, food and hospitality, all while keeping the couple's overall vision at the centre.

Bringing India to an island

Planning an Indian destination wedding in Sri Lanka is a particular kind of exercise in translation.

The rituals come with their own histories. Families arrive with traditions that matter to them. There are expectations around ceremony, hospitality and food, alongside the practical realities of bringing an entire wedding celebration to another country.

Shreeya and Aswin's celebrations drew from their respective family backgrounds, while the wedding itself remained rooted in Sri Lanka.

For our team, this meant understanding what could not be compromised, what could be adapted and where the destination could naturally become part of the story.

It is in these details that destination wedding planning becomes less about production and more about understanding people.

Making Sri Lanka part of the experience

A destination wedding begins well before the ceremony.

For guests travelling internationally, the first impression of the wedding can happen when they arrive at their hotel, open the door to their room or receive a note from the couple.

We wanted those first moments to feel connected to the place they had travelled to.

The guest experience was therefore treated as part of the wedding itself, from the way guests were welcomed to the small details that introduced them to Sri Lanka and to the world of Lunuganga.

There was a sense that guests weren't simply arriving for a wedding. They had been invited into a destination, a home and a story.

When the weather changes the plan

Of course, destination weddings come with something no planner can control: the weather.

For Shreeya and Aswin, this became particularly real on the nights of the 25th and 26th.

What had been forecast as a passing spell of rain arrived instead as heavy, sustained downpours and strong winds, the early edge of what would go on to become Cyclone Ditwah, one of the most severe storms to hit Sri Lanka in recent years.

For a wedding built around open-air settings at Lunuganga and Jetwing Saman Villas, this was the kind of challenge no amount of planning could fully prepare you for.

But contingency plans had been quietly built into the schedule from the beginning.

As the weather changed, those plans were put into motion. Timings were adjusted, teams stayed alert through the night and vendors communicated constantly. Every decision came back to the same priority: protecting the moments that mattered most to Shreeya and Aswin.

We are conscious that the days that followed brought real hardship to communities across the country, and we hold that with the seriousness it deserves.

For our couple and their families, we are simply grateful that the wedding itself closed before the worst of the storm arrived, and that two days of celebration were not lost to it.

The beauty of the unseen

The photographs show the finished wedding.

They don't show the weeks and months spent making sure everything happens in the right place, at the right time, for the right people.

Behind a destination wedding is a complex choreography: venues, vendors, transportation, ceremony requirements, family requests, menus, weather, timings and hundreds of small decisions that rarely make it into the final gallery.

The weather was simply one of those moments when the unseen work became particularly important.

For the couple, ideally, none of it should be visible.

They should remember the people, the place and the feeling of the day.

That was particularly important for Shreeya and Aswin. With guests travelling across borders and several celebrations unfolding over the wedding weekend, our role was to hold the moving pieces together while allowing the couple to remain at the centre of it all.

Looking back

There is always a moment in the planning process when the moodboards, timelines and conversations disappear and the wedding becomes real.

For Shreeya and Aswin, that moment unfolded over two days: through the colour and energy of the mehendi, the music and ocean air of the sangeet, and finally the quiet intimacy of their ceremony at Lunuganga.

For us, the significance of the wedding lies not only in how it looked, but in how naturally all its different parts came together: Indian traditions within a Sri Lankan landscape, familiar family rituals in an unfamiliar destination, and a series of celebrations shaped around two people rather than a formula.

Seeing the wedding now featured in Vogue India Weddings is a beautiful recognition of that story.

But for the Cherish team, the story begins much earlier, in the planning room, in the conversations with the couple, in the decisions made months before anyone arrived in Sri Lanka, and in all the details that quietly made those few days possible.

We are incredibly honoured and proud to see Shreeya and Aswin’s celebration featured in Vogue India Weddings. To have a wedding we planned in Sri Lanka recognised by one of the most influential voices in the world of fashion, weddings and design is a truly special moment for our entire team.

More than anything, we are grateful to have been part of a celebration that brought two families, multiple traditions and guests from across the world together in a place we are so proud to call home: Sri Lanka.