Every wedding industry has its quiet gatekeepers, the people trusted to turn a couple’s most private instincts into a celebration that still manages to hold hundreds, sometimes thousands, of guests. Founded in 2015 by Tina Tharwani alongside Saurabh and Manoj, a trio who came up through film production rather than events, Shaadi Squad has built that reputation over more than 70 weddings across India and abroad, including the intensely private Tuscany wedding of Virat Kohli and Anushka Sharma. We spoke to Tharwani, the brand’s co-founder, about what carries over from a film set to a wedding brief, how to draw a couple’s real personality out of a mood board, and why scale, on its own, has stopped being the most interesting thing about an Indian wedding.

Shaadi Squad Founders- Manoj, Tina & Saurabh

You, Saurabh and Manoj came from a film production background before founding Shaadi Squad in 2015. What carried over from that world into wedding planning, and what did you have to unlearn?

Film production taught us how to think in terms of the larger picture, how a story comes together through hundreds of moving parts, and how planning can make a mammoth task feel effortless. You learn to anticipate, to problem-solve quickly and, most importantly, to understand that every detail has a place within the larger narrative. That discipline has stayed with us.

We had to unlearn the need to make everything feel perfectly orchestrated. Our role is to understand the couple and then find the right way to translate it into an experience. Sometimes that means being involved and sometimes it means knowing when to step back.

Wearing multiple hats, as a Co-Founder, Head of Business Development & Client Servicing, you’re the one translating a couple’s vision into reality end-to-end. How would you describe your own design and planning philosophy?

The approach is one of translation and discernment. A couple may arrive with a clear idea of what they want, but sometimes the actual brief often lies beneath that, in their personalities, priorities and the kind of experience they want their guests to have. There is no fixed house aesthetic. Every element, from the venue and design to the food, music, pacing and movement of guests, flows organically from an understanding of the couple.

Wedding of Shiv and Elora - Captured by Dosmasenlamesa

Over 70 weddings in, each one is meant to feel unified only in reflecting the couple’s personality rather than a house style. How do you draw that out of a couple in the early conversations?

We make a genuine effort to understand the couple beyond their immediate wedding brief. This means understanding their idea of an ideal Sunday, their travel choices, the kind of music they enjoy, their aesthetic, how they like to host, and even what they would never want at their wedding. It goes beyond simply looking at a mood board. These details offer a more authentic understanding of who they are and allow the celebration to feel distinctly their own.

Several of your weddings have needed extraordinary privacy and security alongside scale. How do you plan for both intimacy and that level of confidentiality at once?

At Shaadi Squad, privacy and confidentiality are taken very seriously and are built into the planning process from the outset. For us, it is not simply about limiting access on the wedding day, but about being thoughtful about how information, people and logistics are managed throughout the planning journey.

This means working with a trusted and carefully selected vendor network, maintaining clear protocols around guest information and schedules, and ensuring that everyone involved understands the importance of discretion. Guest movement, access points, vendor coordination and on-ground communication are planned with the same level of detail as the design and production. The intention is never to make the wedding feel guarded or restrictive. It is to create a well-managed environment where the family and their guests can be completely present.

Wedding of Awaan and Natsuko - Captured by Sam and Ekta

Shaadi Squad is Mumbai-based but plans weddings across India and abroad, for families with very different traditions and expectations. How much does that range shape how you approach each brief?

The range of work we do keeps it interesting. No two weddings can be approached through the same lens, even when the destination or cultural context appears similar. A celebration in Rajasthan carries a very different rhythm from one in Oman or Koh Samui, not only in its visual language, but in its traditions, social dynamics and the way people experience the space.

Recces and site visits play a significant role in that process: walking the venue, understanding the landscape, meeting local teams and absorbing the nuances that simply cannot be captured in a site deck. Working across such varied destinations and families means there is always something new to learn, and that constant learning keeps the work evolving.

Is there a wedding you consider a personal masterpiece? One that still stays with you?

It is difficult to name just one because every wedding leaves something behind, since each one teaches us something, challenges us in a different way, and ultimately shapes how we work. But if one had to be named, it would be the Virat Kohli and Anushka Sharma wedding in Tuscany. It came at a relatively early stage of our journey and was an experience that gave us immense confidence in the kind of work we wanted Shaadi Squad to be known for. The intimacy, privacy and attention to detail of the celebration made it particularly memorable.

Wedding of Jinisha and Rishabh - Captured by House on the Clouds

In a market moving toward bigger, more elaborate celebrations, how do you make sure intimacy isn’t lost?

We do not believe in a cookie-cutter approach to planning or executing weddings. Every decision has to begin with the couple and the family, their personalities, preferences, traditions and the way they want to experience the celebration. A wedding can be large and elaborate while still feeling intimate. The scale does not determine how personal a celebration feels, the thought behind every decision does.

When the design, hospitality, experiences and even the smallest details genuinely flow from the couple and their family, the wedding retains a sense of intimacy, regardless of how grand the setting may be.

Trends in Indian weddings move fast. How do you stay ahead of them without losing what makes a Shaadi Squad wedding recognisable?

We are not particularly trend-driven. Of course, we stay closely attuned to evolving hospitality practices across the world, as well as developments in art, food, travel and culture. But these are sources of inspiration, not templates to replicate. The focus is always on ensuring that each wedding feels personal and is genuinely derived from the couple. A wedding should not feel like a collection of what is currently popular on Instagram or Pinterest; it should have a point of view that comes from the people at its centre. Trends may naturally influence the work, but they are never the starting point.

Looking ahead, what does the future of the Indian wedding and its scale look like through your lens?

Indian weddings have reached a point where scale, by itself, is no longer the most interesting measure of a celebration. The next evolution, in my view, will be about how thoughtfully that scale is used. Couples are becoming more exposed to the world, to exceptional hospitality, design, food, art and travel. While it does make the influence interesting, it is also making them more discerning about what genuinely belongs in their wedding and what does not. Most exciting celebrations ahead will be those that are expansive in experience, but very specific in character.

What distinguishes Tina Tharwani’s approach, across a Shaadi Squad roster that spans Tuscan countryside and Mumbai ballrooms alike, is a refusal to let scale do the talking. A wedding, in her reading, is never really about the guest count or the production value; it is about whether the thousand small decisions behind it trace back honestly to two specific people. As Indian weddings grow more exposed to global hospitality and more saturated with trend, that discernment, knowing precisely what belongs and what doesn’t, may end up being the harder, rarer skill. A decade in, Tharwani and her co-founders have built Shaadi Squad on betting that it is.

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