When Aswin Kannan flew to Coimbatore to meet Shreeya Adka for the first time, he greeted her at the airport with a kiss on the forehead. Adka was delighted to see him, though her immediate response was rather less romantic. “Oh my God, you can’t do that here,” she told him.
Kannan had grown up in Singapore and had not anticipated that his airport greeting might attract attention in India. The misunderstanding became one of the first stories they would retell about their relationship, which had begun two months earlier through a video call arranged by their parents. Kannan’s father and Adka’s mother had been friends for years and hoped the pair might get along. Soon, the couple were speaking every day, prompting their parents to ask them to slow down.
“We always joke that the interesting part isn’t how we met, but how well we got along,” says Adka.
Their lives were already divided between demanding careers and different countries. Adka, who trained at the Culinary Institute of America and at three Michelin-starred restaurants, was running her Coimbatore restaurant, The French Door–she is also a judge on MasterChef India Tamil. Kannan was managing his business in Singapore. Yet they crossed borders whenever they could. The second time they met, Adka travelled to Singapore, met his parents and went to Bintan with Kannan. By then, the effort itself had begun to tell them where the relationship was headed
Their families, less content to leave matters unspoken, wanted an answer. During a visit to Coimbatore, Kannan walked up to Adka’s mother and said, “I’d like to marry your daughter.”
Their wedding in Sri Lanka began to take shape after the couple visited Lunuganga, Geoffrey Bawa’s former country estate in Bentota, following a venue search that had taken them through Scotland and the Maldives. Hidden beyond a village road–the couple booked it with little debate. “We both knew,” says Kannan. “Like many things in life, when you know, you know.”
In every guest room, the couple placed a book on Bawa’s architecture with tea, local cinnamon and traditional Sri Lankan masks. Each hamper included a handwritten note thanking the recipient for making the journey. “We wanted them to understand why we had chosen Lunuganga,” says Adka. “If we ever build a home, we would love to bring a little of that feeling into it.”
For Adka, hospitality could not be separated from the wedding in Sri Lanka itself. Guests were travelling from India and Singapore, and some of the older relatives were leaving the country for the first time. She worked with the Sri Lankan culinary team before the celebrations, paying particular attention to what her parents and grandparents would be comfortable eating. Indian and Sri Lankan dishes sat alongside a laksa station, a nod to the couple’s life in Singapore.
Kannan, meanwhile, made it his job to keep the chorus of wedding opinions from overwhelming her. “I wanted to make sure Shreeya could create the wedding she wanted without being pulled in different directions," he says.
The celebrations began on November 25, 2025, with a mehendi in Lunuganga’s gardens. Saffron, marigold and blush-toned flowers were woven through the greenery, and handwoven textiles introduced colour that complemented the estate. A watercolour artist painted portraits of guests against the estate’s pond and gardens, turning each one into a postcard they could take home.
Adka wore a mustard Anita Dongre lehenga embroidered with flowers, beads and sequins, along with gold jewellery that had belonged to her grandmother and great-grandmother, as well as pieces collected by her mother for her wedding. Kannan wore a white kurta and a waistcoat embroidered in sage green, ivory and yellow.
A drizzle began during the afternoon, though the dancing continued. Even Adka’s grandparents joined in, and the sight of both families carrying on in the rain became one of the memories guests continued to speak about.
That evening, the wedding party moved to the oceanfront Jetwing Saman Villas for the sangeet. The sea sat beyond the candlelit space, where family performances continued late into the night. Local ingredients ran through the drinks menu, from raw mango with Sri Lankan gin to pineapple jam, basil and lunu dehi.
Adka changed into a midnight navy Shantnu Nikhil gown with a corseted bodice, tonal embroidery and a pleated chiffon skirt; Kannan wore a navy suit. During his speech, he surprised her with an emerald and diamond necklace he had designed with BP de Silva, the Singapore jewellery house founded by a Sri Lankan family in 1872.
Before working on the piece, Kannan had read books and articles on jewellery design. He chose an emerald, his favourite gemstone, and drew the necklace’s curved form from the waves around the island.
The Hindu ceremony was held the following morning beneath Lunuganga’s tree canopy. A mandap of white flowers and clay vessels sat within the garden, where the couple incorporated customs from Adka’s Karnataka roots and Kannan’s Tamil heritage.
She began the ceremony in an aubergine Kanchipuram silk sari from Angadi Heritage, woven with a geometric gold zari pattern. Among her jewellery was a ruby ring made from a piece once given to her great-grandmother by her father, which Adka’s mother later had reset for her.
For the oonjal ceremony and thali tying, she changed into a vivid pink Kanchipuram sari from Tulsi Madras. Relatives gathered around the swing to sing, bringing the Tamil ritual into a ceremony that had already made room for customs from both families.
For the Elai Saapadu, served on banana leaves after the ceremony, Adka planned the menu with her mother’s best friend and brought in two chefs with a personal connection to the bride. One was her own; the other had cooked for her mother’s friend’s family for 40 years and had known Adka since childhood, promising over the years that he would cook for her whenever she married.
Through the morning, Adka was amused by mongooses peering from corners of the estate, including one that appeared as she was getting ready. She decided they were Bawa’s pets checking that she remained on schedule. “They were probably just after food,” she admits, “but I like my version better.”
The couple spent much of the ceremony exchanging private jokes whenever someone did something silly around them. Later, during their photographs, they were finally given a few minutes away from the guests. For Adka, who had spent months thinking about the menus, the celebrations and the comfort of everyone present, it was the first moment in which being married felt real.
“Aswin and I were laughing throughout the day,” she says. “It never felt like a formal routine. It felt like two best friends getting married.”
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