Still Waters — Inside The Gen Zen Wedding Rewriting The Rules Of Indian Celebration

Some love stories begin with a grand gesture. Malika Nagpal and Krish Sharma's began with a classroom, a shared elective, and the quiet philosophy of a religion neither of them had fully expected to change their lives. It was 2018, their final year at the University of Toronto Mississauga, and despite different academic worlds — criminology for her, science for him — they found themselves seated in the same Buddhism course. Study sessions became bike rides. Bike rides gave way to long conversations. And somewhere in that unhurried, contemplative rhythm, something deeper took root.

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Seven years later, the same spirit guided every detail of their wedding. When it came time to celebrate, Malika and Krish did not reach for spectacle. They reached for meaning.

The Setting

They chose The Roseate, New Delhi — a venue whose Zen-inspired architecture felt less like a backdrop and more like a collaborator. Serene water bodies, geometric symmetry, natural textures, and calming expanses of space: it was a place that understood restraint. At a time when Indian weddings so often embrace layered themes, towering floral installations, and elaborate productions, Malika and Krish chose a different path entirely.

“We didn't want to cover spaces with heavy draping or large structures that transformed them entirely,” Malika explains. “The space was not a backdrop to be hidden — it was a collaborator in the experience. Minimalism, for us, created intimacy. It allowed guests to focus on connection, emotion, and presence rather than spectacle.”

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The result was a celebration that felt personal and immersive in equal measure: architecture and emotion working in concert, nothing added for excess, everything weighted with memory.

Symbolic Details

Look closely at any corner of Malika and Krish's wedding, and you'll find a story. Their wedding card featured two bicycles leaning against a maple tree — the bikes a nod to those early rides that defined their courtship, the maple leaf a quiet tribute to the University of Toronto Mississauga where they met. These were not decorative flourishes. They were a private language, fluent only to those who knew them.

Their cocktail event leaned into a different memory: the proposal. Krish had asked Malika to marry him in Mexico, and so the evening was designed around a tropical jungle disco aesthetic — a single six-foot disco ball suspended in the glasshouse, a circular sunset screen behind the DJ evoking the beach clubs of Tulum, and natural jungle-like energy enhanced rather than manufactured. “We wanted to bring that feeling, that memory, that place into the room,” Krish says. “But we were careful not to make it overdone or forced. Less is more, always.”

Even the cocktail menu carried meaning — each drink named after a real drink from their travels together. Their welcome night, Folk & Fizz, drew from a Jaipur staycation the couple had taken, filling the room with Rajasthani folk singers and dancers so their guests might feel the same warmth of hospitality they had discovered on that trip.

In Their Own Words

We sat down with the couple to understand how eight years of shared life shaped a single, extraordinary day.

What did a 'Gen Zen wedding' mean to you when you first started planning?

Malika: For us, it meant intention over spectacle. We didn't think about trends or scale — we thought about the experience. Over the eight years we've been together, we have collected moments, places, meals, conversations, and quiet rituals that shaped our love. A Gen Zen wedding was our way of sharing those lived experiences with our families. We wanted them to feel our love, not just witness it. We also chose not to have a traditional dance floor. The entire venue became the dance floor. It made the celebration immersive and intimate, and it dissolved the line between performer and audience.

Those early bike rides — what do they still mean to you now?

Krish: Those rides defined three things: comfort, friendship, and trust. Whenever we got on our bikes, we were in sync without needing to say a word. If one of us sped up, the other adjusted. If one slowed down, the other matched the pace. We never had to ask. We often chose the path less travelled. And when we encountered obstacles, we worked through them as a team. In many ways, those bike rides were a metaphor for our relationship — exploring without fear, adjusting without ego, solving without blame. That foundation still holds us steady today.

What was the most meaningful moment of the day?

Krish: The first look. After years of long distance, of growing up together, of choosing each other through different phases of life — seeing her standing there felt surreal. It was no longer an idea or a plan. It was real.

Malika: For me, it was the walk. After I was completely ready, I stepped out of my room and saw my mom, dad, and brother waiting to hold my hand and walk me down the aisle. For the first time that day, everything slowed down. I could see the raw, vulnerable emotion on their faces. It was about family, transition, and love in its purest form. That was the moment it all became real for me.

Through The Lens

The couple turned to Nitin Arora Photography to document their day — drawn to his ability to hold both editorial elegance and emotional truth in a single frame. It was a brief that required nuance: Malika was drawn to clean, modern, Western-influenced photography; Krish wanted to preserve a thread of Indian warmth. Rather than choosing between the two impulses, Nitin Arora wove them together.

“What struck me about their story was its calmness," Nitin shares. “It didn't begin with fireworks but with stillness, and that energy carried into their wedding. The Roseate's minimal, sculptural architecture allowed us to create images that were intentional and elegant while staying true to the raw, candid emotions of the celebration.”

For Nitin, the wedding also speaks to a broader shift in how modern love asks to be seen. “Couples today are not trying to follow a fixed template,” he reflects. “They are bringing their own cultures, experiences, and personalities into the wedding. Malika and Krish didn't choose between being traditional or modern, Indian or Western — they allowed both sides to exist naturally. Because of this shift, the way we photograph weddings also needs to change. It's no longer about directing every frame or chasing only big moments. The smaller, quieter moments often say more about a relationship than the staged ones.”

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