UAE Weddings: Focusing on meaning over magnitude

Floral patterns that remind a bride of her childhood. Vows written straight from the heart. A story woven into the veil. Handwritten notes. Illustrations and photographs capturing a journey of togetherness.

If you are misty-eyed reading these details, know that you have stepped into the most defining wedding trend of 2025 and perhaps beyond: extreme personalisation. When individualism rules, where everyone has a story to share, couples in the UAE are rewriting the wedding rulebook to move away from templated gatherings to celebrations echoing who they truly are. Of course, the larger-than-life parties we’re so fond of in the UAE aren’t going anywhere but the memo is crystal clear – sentiment over size, personalisation over pomp, emotion over excess.

Weddings have always carried personal flourishes but what makes them so different today is the extreme length couples go through to personalise the day. From a song played at the bride’s entry being an ode to their first date to cocktails named after the groom’s preferred flavour or doodles on a matchbox cover, every feature can have meaning and memory.

To reflect a couple’s story in their own words, on their own terms, these hyper-personalised events must be tailored to the couple’s experiences, haute couture style.

Small touches, big meaning

The most telling transformation is in the guest list, long seen as the ultimate marker of grandeur. “We are seeing couples move away from the pressure of inviting 1,000 people. Instead, they are opting to say ‘I do’ in front of 100-150 guests,” says Vaibbhav Anju Arora, co-founder of Ikigaii Wedding Planners. “Smaller numbers mean deeper curation and more room to add those personal layers.”

Arora recalls a 12-person wedding he organised for an American bride and Pakistani groom: It had Western-style signing books, the traditional chador ritual, and guests were served steak and Kashmiri chai. On a cruise wedding from Dubai to Oman, he put together a memory table where friends added Polaroids throughout the evening, turning the reception into a living scrapbook. And for a book-loving bride, he designed a photo booth shaped like a bookshelf.

Social feeds as fodder

Inevitably, a big factor driving the shift towards hyper-personalisation comes from the Instagram effect. An influencer or celebrity reel with jaw-dropping aesthetics goes viral, and suddenly brides want their own special moment.

Hannah Matthews, CEO and Creative Director of Couture Events World Wide, notes that couples have often scrolled through hundreds of videos before they consult her. “They want their wedding to stand out too, to spark new conversations among guests who may have seen those very videos. Social media has created a pressure to make every wedding feel unique, but the upside is that today’s couples are more experimental than ever,” she says.

That’s where her role as a planner deepens. “We try to uncover their vision and their non-negotiables,” Matthews explains. “The journey always starts from the couple’s story; their passions and what matters most to them. From there, it’s about translating those elements into a memorable experience.”

For one couple, each of whom had lost a parent, she created a structure of delicate birds suspended above the venue to symbolise their parents’ presence and blessings as they exchanged vows.

Another of her brides, UK-born Jenny Street, is getting married to her Italian fiancé Luca Cocco at the Four Seasons Dubai in April. Their plans are a textbook example of personalisation done right.

Street is focusing on a celebration that fuses her British roots with his Italian heritage. The vibe: a garden-style affair in white and green, with long banquet tables and stationery inscribed with Italian phrases. A crest featuring their initials will appear everywhere while Diptyque candles will scent the space. A pre-wedding dinner echoes the Italian expression La Dolce Vita, with Amalfi-inspired lemon-themed décor and wood-fired pizzas. Across the different events, signature cocktails will carry Cocco’s favourite flavours while her fiancé’s favoured orchids will be incorporated into the décor. The couple even worked with a calligrapher to develop a bespoke font that Street hopes to use in their future home.

But her most personal touch is the vows. “We’ll share them privately first in a letter, before reading them at the ceremony,” she says. “I want the wedding to be timeless, subtle and classic; an occasion that our guests remember us by.”

ONE idea, MANY EXPRESSIONS

For planners, personalisation becomes the ultimate tool for creativity. They often transfer one single element of the wedding to a larger palette. Recently, a Formula 1-themed wedding went viral on social media for the way it reflected the couples’ passion for motorsports, with seats, tables and flowers at the reception designed like a grandstand and the replica of a race car to add to the event’s atmospheric backdrop.

Customised cocktail toppers, menus themed and renamed around the couple’s favourite foods, welcome signage, even dance floor design… it’s all about creating an immersive experience that could live on a Pinterest feed.

For planner Isheeta Sharma, founder of Isheeta Sharma Design and Events, the bridal outfit is the starting point. “The bridal ensemble is the showstopper,” she says. “I take colours, motifs or embroidery details from the outfit and expand them into the décor, the stationery, even the floral installations.”

From there on, it’s about incorporating a couple’s hobbies, dreams and snippets of their personalities into the functions. For one couple with a passion for travel, Sharma wove their journeys into the décor at the entrance, using photographs and souvenirs. For another, she is commissioning an original song narrating the love story. “It’s a lot of work,” she admits, “but it was completely worth it.”

And with a bit of imagination, the possibilities are endless. Ever thought of naming a star – or an entire constellation – after yourself? That’s what filmmaker and planner Gauri Chadha, co-founder of luxury event agency The Big Night once did for a couple who shared their birthdays. She named a star after the couple based on their constellation, weaving it into the giveaways, entertainment and design during the wedding. “It made for stunning visuals besides being very meaningful for them,” says Chadha.

No detail too tiny

If aerial spectacles make for more eye-catching moments, so do the smaller details on ground. Nowhere is this more evident than in stationery that is increasingly serving as a canvas for personalisation. Whether invitations, menu cards, cue cards, thank-you notes or favours, beautifully designed stationery with bespoke monograms, wax seals, illustrations and calligraphy sets each occasion apart, while providing guests with keepsakes.

Dubai-based Vaishali Shah, founder of Ananya Cards, a luxury stationery company, calls it the “first and last touchpoint” of a wedding, capable of setting the tone for the entire celebration. “People want their stationery to look beautiful and tactile to photograph for they can become a personal statement narrating their love story, culture, values and everything that’s important to them.”

For a UK wedding held at the Natural History Museum, for instance, a bride’s love for her dog was captured in the invite, with an illustration of the pet climbing the museum’s famous steps. Similarly, at a destination wedding in Sri Lanka, Shah’s team designed illustrations for each function, inspired by the local flora and fauna, including individual artworks for each game at the game night.

Bespoke monograms, meanwhile, have emerged as a particularly enduring trend, adding a distinctive stamp of personality to the celebration.

“I see a monogram as a wedding logo and a symbol of the couple’s union,” Shah says. “It’s wonderful when these elements extend beyond the wedding – on linens, dressing gowns, luggage – so the memory continues long after the event.”

These can be incorporated into the décor, added to floral elements or with clever lighting techniques, projected onto the venue’s walls or dancefloor.

Cross-cultural creativity

Few other weddings lend themselves so readily to customisation as the cross-cultural unions that are normal in the UAE. Couples and planners can draw on two different traditions – but here, the creative challenge lies in striking a balance between their respective heritages while keeping it individualistic and unique.

Take Tamara Manukyan, an Armenian bride-to-be, who is set to wed her Irish fiancé Michael Byrne this November at the Anantara Santorini in Abu Dhabi. She is renting out the entire resort, pulling out all stops for a dream celebration with just 60 guests.

Her priority is a wedding that meaningfully fuses two cultures, going beyond fireworks, tiered cakes and dancing. Every detail is being planned reflects this balance: the sounds of the Armenian duduk woodwind will accompany the ceremony, the first dance will incorporate Irish and Armenian music, the menu will showcase the best of both cuisines, and she plans to sing a song she had thought of when she was 16, as a dedication to the love of her life.

Tamara has also planned a poignant gesture for her in-laws. “By a huge coincidence, we are getting married on the same date as my fiancé’s parents did 50 years ago. We will be raising a toast to them as well through our own celebrations. Perhaps we will use AI to actually recreate their moments at ours,” says Manukyan.

For other couples, it’s often less about grandeur and more about following their hearts while channelling their culture. While the ceremony may remain rooted in religious and traditional customs, couples will often weave in meaningful details to make these moments feel unique to them. This might be by way particular hymns or chants, writing their own vows, redesigning the altar or mandap décor, or inviting specific loved ones to take part in rituals on stage.

Balaji Sundaravadivelu, an Indian national and his Filipina wife, Marnelle Pacle, still get emotional recalling their Covid-era wedding, a scaled-down but deeply personal affair with just 50 close friends and family. The event beautifully blended two traditions: Marnelle walked down the aisle in a classic white gown before slipping into an Indian lehenga, while Balaji paired his barong shirt with traditional Indian touches. Guests relished delicacies from both countries.

Chicken adobo and lumpia were served alongside mutton rogan josh and chicken tikka and the music swung between Indian chartbusters and timeless Disney melodies with a Filipino and Bollywood dance-off adding to the fun. “We never wanted to follow any trends,” says Balaji while Marnelle dreamily adds: “Our love is proof that it doesn’t matter where you come from; it matters where you go.”

Fortunately, cities like Dubai offer the perfect space for such cross-cultural dreams to play out. In July this year, a New York-based Indian couple were abandoned their plans of getting married in Turkey and moved the celebrations to Dubai, partly because it’s easier for their guests. The new brief? To recreate a slice of the Hamptons.

Their planner Innayat Khubchandani, alongside Chadha’s team at The Big Night, turned a local ballroom into a lush garden with hedges and fresh flowers that transported guests across the seas. “In a globalised world, anything is possible,” Chadha says.

The flip side: a stress fest

All that extreme curation, however, begs a question: how much is too much? Weddings are inherently stressful with pressure around logistics, family emotions and management, timing and more but add the focus of creating Instagram-worthy moments into the mix and the pressure can feel overwhelming.

Sharma recalls a bride who was upset because her roses were not “red enough”. She warns: “Customisation is great but don’t let emotions overtake logic!”

A joyful event can easily turn into a stress fest and the pressure to have a perfect wedding makes has been compounded by economic, social and technological factors, says Chetna Chakravarthy, celebrity life coach and CEO of UAE wellness app Wishtok.

“In many cases, ideas are being copied from social media and aren’t unique at all. Couples follow trends in the illusion of being different, as long as no one in their circle has done the same. But all this can actually rob the event of its authenticity,” she says, adding that many couples now seem more concerned about how it all looks on social media than talking about their relationship and their marriage.

Customisation is also a path for couples to stand out in their circle, she says. The pressure is about making sure the guests have enough Instagrammable spaces, corners, decor and objects.

Instead, she advises concentrating on what truly matters to you. “Treat a wedding as the celebration it is, not as the zenith of your relationship. Your married life is just beginning, there are many grand experiences ahead. A hashtag may matter, but it should never cause a meltdown.

Yet, for all the stress, this shift towards personalisation can spark communication about values and put emotional resonance over scale and spectacle. Authentic moments can be created even amid million-dollar fireworks, designer trousseaus and exotic destinations. We’re calling it: A return to intimacy really is the new luxury.