BENGALURU: The dreamy weddings of Bollywood A-listers like Anushka Sharma, Richa Chadha and Ali Fazal to name a few...Brought back big fat Indian weddings in a bigger and grander way and Devika Narain probably has a huge role to play in this.
Narain, a sought-after wedding planner, says she prefers to be called a wedding designer. “I feel like I coined the term designer because I didn’t want to plan weddings. I don’t care if people’s cars don’t reach them on time but I care about the aesthetics and care about the designs,” says Narain, who was in the city for the launch of Janaki Kirloskar’s luxury tableware brand KIKA.
The beauty of weddings designed by Narain is the Indian-ness of it. “When I started my own company, Pinterest had launched in India and all weddings looked like western weddings with orchids and white pearls. Indian weddings are such a cultural part of India. We come from such a rich cultural heritage. Now when I type ‘mandapam’ I get options and images that are Indian. It makes me feel happy. I feel Indian weddings have reclaimed their space, with the world opening up to them,” says Narain, who refused to pick her favourite flowers among the most popular Indian flowers, namely Marigold, Jasmine and Tuberose.
Flowers are also probably one of the reasons why she loves the Bengaluru weddings. “This city grows some of the most exotic and beautiful flowers. The weather is also lovely so you can do many things for an outdoor wedding,” says Narain.
Narain feels lucky to work with really interesting people who give her creative freedom to do things, producing extraordinary results. For example, for one of the temple weddings she had the whole temple, lit up with diyas. “That wedding was a week after Diwali during the COVID. Since we could not go home for Diwali, we decided to light the whole temple with Diyas,” says Narain, who was featured in the Netflix docu-series The Big Day.
For many who are aspiring to be like her, Narain says one of the key qualities that they should have is the willingness to work hard. “I became a designer at the end of a series of experiments. I was studying literature, I wanted to be a journalist, then I wanted to be an interior designer and I even worked for a couple of companies. But it wasn’t for me. It is important that people, who are starting off in professional life, should be willing to experiment with different things. When our generation was in schools and colleges there weren’t as many options, but these days, there are so many interesting things one can do,” says Narain, who loves the high and energy of wedding planning, and claims to feel a dip in energy when the wedding season is over.