Kathmandu-born Shaibyaa Rajbhandari and Eshan Jayamanne Don, who grew up in Colombo, Sri Lanka, first crossed paths in the most serendipitous of ways. Before starting their MBA at Stanford, the school’s Slack bot randomly paired them together for a virtual coffee chat. “Eshan showed up ten minutes late to what was supposed to be a thirty-minute call,” Rajbhandari says. “I think it was love at first sight for him. He denies it, obviously, though he was texting me religiously the second the call ended.”
The proposal was nowhere close to a surprise. “I am a planner. I hate surprises unless they’re being executed by someone I trust completely,” says Rajbhandari. “And Eshan cannot keep a secret to save his life.” So she decided to take matters into her own hands. “I told him exactly when, where, and how it would happen. One condition: if he didn’t cry, I’d say no.” The couple, by their own admission, are unapologetic foodies, and Don booked a dinner at SingleThread in Healdsburg. He arranged for the ring to arrive with dessert. “He choked up a little,” Rajbhandari laughs. “Whether genuinely or because I’d made it a condition, I’ll never fully know. I said yes.”
The couple knew they wanted the wedding to reflect their heritage: “a Catholic Sri Lankan boy and a Hindu Nepali girl, both living abroad.” For wedding planner and designer Devika Narain, who worked with the couple on the celebrations, that became the centre of the brief. “Shaibyaa and Eshan both wanted a wedding that was honest to their roots,” she says. “Shaibyaa wanted to bring a piece of Nepal, and Eshan wanted to give Shaibyaa everything she wanted.” They considered both their hometowns before ultimately settling on Bentota. Nepal, Rajbhandari jokes, quickly became impractical. “Given the number of relatives and friends my parents have, even if I got married on Everest, it would have been an 800-person affair.” Taking the wedding abroad became the only realistic way to avoid what she describes as “a mini festival.”
The couple chose Saman Villas for their wedding in Sri Lanka, a property overlooking the Indian Ocean. “It was one of the few places that gave us our own cliffside, generous garden space, enough rooms for guests, and still felt intimate,” she explains. The celebrations began with a welcome dinner. Instead of standard place cards, every guest found a personalised note tucked behind their name card, written by the couple. “A joke, a memory, a moment only they would recognise,” Rajbhandari says. “The room shifted when people started reading them. People were laughing, crying, passing cards around tables.”
