3 min read
By Indian wedding standards, Isha Kothari and Drew Greenberg’s celebration was a low-key affair. Sure, there was the sangeet-style party that filled up the cavernous Aqua, a hybrid Japanese-Italian restaurant in New York City, with more than 500 guests. And there was the ceremony and reception at the Rainbow Room at Rockefeller Center, which lasted until 3 a.m. And the bride wore six looks in three days—along with an impressive suite of bespoke emerald, ruby, and diamond jewels made specially for the occasion. (Her family has been in the gem business for four generations.)
But rather than the typical three-hour ceremony, they kept it to an hour and a half—and invited just 220 people to the main event. And instead of making it all about her, they incorporated Drew’s Jewish faith, too, and blended the best of both worlds. “That was something we spent a lot of time doing during the planning process,” Isha says. “We wanted it to feel as though we were bringing our two cultures and lives together.”
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Isha wore a lehenga set designed by Seema Gujral.
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And a suite of custom jewels made by members of her family.
A Jain priest and a rabbi co-officiated the affair, transitioning between traditions—which turned out to share several similarities. For instance, in Jewish weddings the bride circles the groom seven times, signifying their new bond. In Jain weddings the couple join hands to take seven steps around a sacred fire. And in a parallel of sorts to the Jewish rite of breaking a glass at the end, a Jain wedding begins with the groom stepping on a clay pot (the sampoot), symbolically removing any obstacles in their path. “We picked the most important elements,” Isha says. “It wasn’t my wedding. It wasn’t Drew’s wedding. It was ours.”
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Celebrations kicked off with a sangeet-style party at Aqua.
To be fair, the bride did get to have a day that was all about her. The afternoon before, her grandparents hosted 135 guests—mostly extended family members who had flown in from around the world—for lunch at Ambassadors Clubhouse. “That was more our traditional Indian day,” Isha says, “where we performed a lot of rituals that we weren’t able to do otherwise throughout the weekend.”
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Indian traditions, like a version of the mala ceremony, took center stage at the lunch the bride’s grandparents hosted at Ambassadors Clubhouse.
There was a swagat mala, a welcome ritual where the bride’s side greets the groom’s with blessings and garlands. That segued into iterations of the haldi and mala ceremonies, in which Isha was showered with rose petals (instead of the more common turmeric paste) and then adorned with an auspicious necklace by her mother. Drew declined to do a full baraat, which would have required him to parade down a New York City street on a white horse, so they improvised and did their own version at the restaurant—and included other dances, like the garba. Everyone came festively dressed in Indian attire and feasted on a vegetarian menu of Ambassadors Clubhouse highlights, including beetroot dahi puri, chili cheese pakode, paneer tikka, and methi romanesco and chana biryani. Out of respect to Isha’s grandparents, they didn’t serve alcohol.
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Dinner was vegetarian in honor of Isha’s Jain heritage.
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The five-tiered cake was a Ron Ben-Israel creation.
Such was not the case the next evening at their Rainbow Room reception, for which the couple managed to coax cocktail recipes out of two of their favorite NYC restaurants: 53 (for its Raspberry Bouquet concoction) and Eleven Madison Park (for the Lucky Bamboo). Drew’s drink of choice—a mezcal negroni—was also on tap, each one poured over a custom-stamped ice cube from Okamoto in Queens. Dinner was an elegant affair of beet and goat cheese salad, Carbone-inspired spicy rigatoni, miso-glazed tofu, and passion fruit pavlova. An extensive “drunchie” menu (grilled cheese, kati rolls, samosas, and Caffè Panna ice cream) followed later, natch.
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Mikael D did the bride’s reception dress (top image), which took 1,300 hours to craft, and afterparty mini.
It was necessary fuel for the biggest surprise of the night: a Knicks-themed pop-a-shot that Isha spent weeks secretly arranging for her husband. “This was Drew’s first Indian wedding, so he was a little overwhelmed,” she says. “That was probably the only part he truly enjoyed.” (She’s kidding, of course.)
This story appears in the October 2026 issue of Town & Country.
Leena Kim is Town & Country’s Senior Editor, covering the travel, jewelry, style, arts and culture, education, and weddings beats. She has no priors—she has been at the magazine since 2013, having started her career at T&C as the assistant to the editor in chief.