One of our more unusual projects has been designing for a big fat Indian destination wedding in the White City. Our clients approached us to conceptualise a pre-wedding cocktail party, to be held the night before the nuptials; the venue was The Leela Palace on Lake Pichola, and 500 guests were expected to attend.
This was our first foray into the wedding industry and we cautioned our clients that a traditionally opulent set-up was off the cards. This was quickly countered with the brief -- they were looking for precisely the opposite, with evening décor that was not typical of a wedding but more a design installation.
We started off with a site visit to Udaipur for a recce of the venue -- a beautiful lawn on the hotel property overlooking the lake, its landscape dotted with stone statues of various animals. This was a starting point for the theme, a surreal forest with largescale flaura and fauna likenesses that would blend into the natural setting of the outdoors. While the conventional Indian wedding features an ornate stage and extravagant décor, which steals attention away from the natural beauty of a destination, we wanted to do precisely the opposite -- highlight the scenic locale by creating a magical setting for everyone in attendance.
As most guests were to arrive from other hotels via the lake jetty, this was the starting point for our design. Pichola's waters are known for crocodiles, and so the jetty featured a 22-foot-long croc arched across it in a backflip. A metal exoskeleton held lights within, and the skin of the reptile was rendered to mimic stained glass. Having walked through this archway, one was greeted by a swarm of dragonflies, thousands of them laser-cut from dichroic acrylic sheets, shimmering in pink and blue light. The entryway was further complemented by fire artists performing along the water's edge, greeting each boat with a display as it sailed in.
The main party lawns featured one thousand roses, each made of fabric and concealing an LED light to render it luminescent. They adorned the landscape in its entirety, even creating imitation hedges, and their lights were set on timers so that the flowers glowed bright and faded in turn. The stand-alone cocktail tables featured a nine-foot-high rose each, made of perforated metal sheets with lighting concealed within, casting interesting patterns of shadow and light. Each table had a mirrored surface, reflecting the rose above it.
Larger-than-life animal likenesses dominated the venue, each rendered in different colours and maintaining the mosaic-like stained glass effect with concealed lighting -- a sabre-wielding frog, two flying turtles and a giraffe peeping out from among the trees, to name a few. Toward the rear of the lawns, the dining area held tables decorated in green foliage and bark wood, with dragonflies lit up within. The dessert section displayed a long line of foot-long ants walking toward the counter, while an eight-foot anteater stood guard.
Beyond the main reception area, another section of the landscape was turned into a mirrored maze, which referenced the lighting installations of minimalist artist Dan Flavin. Within the maze, we created eight gaming set-ups to entertain the young crowd, including a 40-foot foosball table for a special match between the families of the bride and groom.
While most guests delighted in the unusual décor at the cocktail party, many were puzzled and amazed that not one natural flower featured anywhere at the venue, particularly since this was a wedding celebration -- something we took as a compliment.
