Inside Dubai’s iconic ‘wedding in the sky’: How one woman pulled off a 35,000-foot fairytale

Dubai: “It’s very overrated and reductive,” says Chimoo Bhattacharya Acharya when you introduce her as the woman who planned that wedding in the sky.

The line lands with a laugh – she’s not prickly, just unwilling to let one event define her.

That event, however, is the kind of thing people marvel over for years: a Sikh wedding performed mid-air inside a reconfigured private jet, guests strapped into their seats as the bride and groom took their vows in the clouds.

And Chimoo? She made it look effortless.

“It sounds preposterous,” she says, “but, you know, I’m telling you, it’s almost like when you have a dream, everything falls into place. And everybody stepped up and said, you know, you’re doing something which is so out of the box. And so there were really no stumbling blocks. Things just happened organically.”

Bollywood roots, Dubai hustle

The granddaughter of cinematic legend Bimal Roy, Chimoo has lived and breathed film from childhood. Her childhood buddies were Saif Ali Khan, Aamir Khan. So do the math.

“I am extremely proud of my legacy,” she says.

“My grandfather’s film has been selected to be the red carpet film for this year's Venice Film Festival. And we are all going next month.”

But while Bollywood runs in her veins, Dubai gave her wings.

“Within the first week, I told my ex-husband, we either go back or I need to do something with my life, because I cannot be a part of afternoons and evenings where you dress up and you go and have frivolous coffee and just spend an afternoon coming back with whatever I achieved, silly conversations. So that’s what I said. I need to do something with my life.”

A Broadway beginning

Instead of interiors (which, back in the early 2000s, had no scope in a city where very few people owned homes), she pivoted to something that came naturally: magic.

“One of the first events I did, which was just as a lark, to be honest, it’s got a very interesting story how it all happened, was a musical called Bollywood to Broadway, which was sponsored by Gulf News. And it had two films coming together, which was Dil Chahta Hai and Lagaan.

We had the entire, entire crew, of both the films that came and performed live. So you had Aamir Khan, yes. So he came to Dubai – this two decade, I think he hadn’t. We hadn’t been here. This was in 2002,” she recalls.

“And we had about 108 artists that were a part of this crazy Broadway show.”

A wedding among the clouds

Just when she thought she’d seen it all, came the brief that would rewrite Dubai’s wedding playbook: stage an entire Sikh wedding at 35,000 feet.

“It was actually so simple,” Chimoo says with a smile, as if she’s talking about throwing a brunch and not a ceremony mid-air.

The father of the bride had a dream—and it wasn’t a small one.

“A, it was the first time anyone had the grit, or, sorry if I can say, the [expletive], to even think about a concept like this,” she says.

“He had a dream, because he got married in the sky 27 years ago and he wanted a similar experience for his lovely daughter. And that spoke to me but initially since I was busy with my own daughter's wedding, I turned him down, but he waited till I was available."

The to-do list was the stuff of high-drama Netflix scripts: find a private plane, negotiate permissions, strip out rows of seats, create an aisle, and—hardest of all—convince a priest to bring the sacred Guru Granth Sahib on board for a traditional anandkaraj.

Her Dubai solution? Pure, unapologetic luxury. She chose JETEX.

“They were so open, and they were so welcoming. And they said, Yeah, let’s do it and the rest went off without a hitch.” she recalls.

In the final 24 hours, the private aircraft was transformed: around 80 seats pulled out to create a ceremonial space in the centre.

“24 hours prior, they removed, I think, Section C, which is the centre of the of the plane, about 80 seats, because we were going to have an anandkaraj wedding. "

And just like that, a full-blown wedding in the clouds was born—one that Dubai still raves about, long after the confetti has settled.

Why Dubai made her

“This city allows you to dream,” she says. “Nobody here cares about your surname. You can knock on a door, say this is what I do, and if they like it, they give you a chance. Back in Bombay, I would always be ‘so-and-so’s granddaughter.’ In Dubai, I became Chimoo.”

As for her parting advice?

“Marry for the right reasons. And if you’re going to dream, dream big. The sky is not the limit. Trust me – I’ve been there.”