Claudia ‘Clau’ Robles-Gil and Prakhar Gupta met in October 2021, introduced by mutual friends. Both had just arrived back in New York, carrying the aftershocks of the pandemic and the feeling of starting something new. “There was an instant connection and familiarity between us,” says Robles-Gil. “We fell in love early and hard.”
Those first weeks were marked by intensity and care. Robles-Gil was grieving her grandmother, who had passed away due to COVID-19, when they met, and Gupta arrived with a steadiness she needed. “Prakhar met me exactly where I needed him,” she remembers. Soon after, their separately planned Thanksgiving trips unexpectedly aligned in Tulum. Robles-Gil nudged him to join. He did. “At the end of that November trip, only weeks after first meeting, we knew this was special.”
After spending the holidays apart, Gupta in India and Robles-Gil in Mexico, they returned to each other with certainty. “We came back to each other with sure hearts and have been building our life together ever since.”
Marriage arrived not as a grand question, but as an agreement already made. “We knew before the one-year mark that this was the endgame for us.” A traditional proposal never quite fit. During Robles-Gil’s final months in New York, Gupta simply brought her a ring. “A proposal felt more like a formality than a question,” she says. An engagement celebration followed at his family home in February. Months later, at the Anjunadeep Explorations festival in Albania, seated on beanbags by the ocean during a concert, Gupta proposed again. It wasn’t planned, but it was private, tender and theirs alone.
From there, the wedding began to take shape not as a story they wanted to tell together.
Robles-Gil is an artist from Mexico City whose work is rooted in identity, memory and belonging. Gupta runs PGX, a long-form conversation project where he sits with scientists, technologists, artists and thinkers shaping what’s next. That shared instinct for meaning would come to guide the days ahead.
Robles-Gil had felt drawn to Thailand for years. When they finally visited earlier this year, the decision landed immediately. “The moment we stepped onto the JW Marriott Phuket lawn, with the palms and the ocean opening up in front of us, I knew immediately this was the place.” Phuket allowed them to keep the celebration intimate while giving friends from India and abroad a reason to travel. Just as importantly, it placed the wedding by the ocean, a landscape both feel deeply connected to.
