Riya&Mohit

Riya and Mohit met young, and then they kept meeting. Through college and not-college, through cities that changed and friends who didn't, through the long ordinary weeks that long love is mostly made of. Ten years in, the wedding wasn't a beginning; it was a public confirmation of something already true. The vows had been said in a hundred ways before any priest sat them down.

We approached this one quietly. We're not the camera that breaks the moment to set it up again. We waited, we let them look at each other, and we let Jaibagh Palace do the framing. What we got back is what they look like together·the version that ten years quietly made.

Riya wore pink the whole way through·a soft daylight pink for the corridor walk, a deeper rose for the pheras, a regal blush at the mandap. Mohit matched her, in cream and a pink safa, in a way only ten years of knowing what the other one wants can match. The palace's pale arches caught it all·the lehenga, the marigold, the moment after the moment when neither of them needed to be told what came next.

Their hashtag was #RIRIKAMOH·half a tease, half a brand. By the second day every uncle knew it; by the third, it was on the wedding favours. The hashtag is a small thing, but it tells you something about who they are: a decade together, still inventing little inside jokes that the family then adopts and the internet then keeps. They will laugh about it forever. So will we.

The pheras came at night, on a small mandap with marigold and jasmine and a fire the priest barely needed to feed. Riya sat in pink. Mohit sat beside her in pink-safa cream. Their hands didn't shake·these were not new hands. The seven steps happened. The mantras were said. What was new wasn't the vow; it was the witnessing·they finally got to do this where everyone they loved could see them do it. The fire spoke. They listened. It was done.