Kind words from kind people

We had 160 guests flying in from Delhi and Mumbai, and fog closed in on the Mussoorie road the evening before our sangeet. Meher had already moved the shuttles to an earlier slot and dressed a covered terrace as backup. Nobody noticed a thing. Our families still talk about the bonfire night under the deodars.

We wanted a forest wedding without it feeling like a theme park, and Ananya understood that at our first meeting. The haldi was under a mango tree with sal leaves and marigolds, the mandap in soft ivory and brass. The team also dealt with the eco-zone rules on music and fireworks, so we never had to.

My sangeet had 22 performances, a small army of cousins and one very nervous father. The Shrim team ran rehearsals to a proper timetable, did the sound check twice, and got the DJ to switch to old Kishore Kumar songs the moment the elders took the floor. It was the most fun night of the whole wedding.

Four hundred guests, two caterers and a baraat that arrived forty minutes late. Tushar handled it all calmly and kept the pheras on muhurat. The food was excellent and reached the last table hot. My only small complaint is that I would have liked the final invoice a little sooner. Otherwise, I could simply be a father that day.

We booked Shrim for our ring ceremony and ended up trusting them with everything after it. They found a photographer who caught my nani laughing mid-ceremony, organised a sunrise pre-wedding shoot near Sahastradhara, and kept both families on one shared plan. Having the same team from the ring to the vidaai made it all feel connected.

I wanted a reception that felt like a Punjabi winter night: warm, loud and golden. Ananya's team built it with brass lanterns, a marigold ceiling and heaters tucked beside every table. Kabir looked after the live singer's travel and stage requirements and still had the lighting ready before the first guest walked in. My dadi danced for an hour.

We took 120 people from our Dehradun pharma company to Rishikesh for two days. Arjun put the sessions in the mornings, rafting and a nature walk in the afternoons, and ended with a riverside dinner people are still talking about. Rooming, safety briefings, coaches: all handled. My inbox had zero complaints afterwards, which has never happened before.

For our skincare range launch we had three weeks, a hotel ballroom and 250 retailers and media guests to impress. Shrim built a stage set that looked nothing like a ballroom, ran the reveal cues to the second, and had the DJ keep the energy up through networking. Our sales team left that evening with a full diary of distributor meetings.

We run a small software firm and wanted our first annual conference to feel bigger than we are. Arjun's team handled speakers, AV, registrations and an awards night for 180 people. A projector hiccup in the opening session cost us ten minutes, but they fixed it quickly and everything after ran cleanly. We have already booked them for next year.

Our children planned this as a surprise with Meher's help. They recreated our wedding mandap in the garden, brought in folk singers for the Garhwali mangal geet we had at our wedding, and served the same menu from that day. When the photographs from our wedding appeared on the wall, neither of us could speak.

I was seven months along and in no mood to manage anything. Ananya put together a soft sage-and-cream godh bharai at home, with a comfortable seat for me, ginger tea for the aunties and games that even my shy in-laws joined. Everything was cleared by evening. I just had to show up and be spoilt.

I wanted to surprise my wife with her 50th birthday in Mussoorie, where we spent our honeymoon. Shrim found a small hill property with a terrace facing the valley, arranged for 45 friends to be driven up from Dehradun, and had a photographer ready to catch her face as she walked in. Worth every rupee, and every secret I had to keep.

Sixty people, one terrace and a December night that dropped to six degrees. Shrim brought in heaters, a bonfire pit, a DJ who read the room perfectly and a live tikka counter that never ran dry. Parking in our lane got a bit chaotic around ten, but the party itself was the best we have ever hosted.

Our annual fest had 2,000 students, three days of competitions and a headline band on the final night. Kabir's production team built a stage the students still post about, worked directly with the band's management, and ran crowd control alongside our volunteers. They also gave a proper platform to our Garhwali and Kumaoni folk dance teams.