పెళ్లి

Pelli – the Telugu wedding

150–900 guests · one to three days · the big one

A Telugu wedding is a sequence, not a single event – and the food has to move with it. The muhurtham your priest fixes might fall at eleven in the morning or two in the middle of the night; either way, guests need to be fed properly on both sides of it. We build the entire catering plan around the ritual clock, and we have never asked a priest to hurry.

The days before

Most families begin at home. The pellikuthuru and pellikoduku ceremonies – held separately at the bride’s and groom’s houses a day or two ahead – are where each of them is formally “made” bride and groom: elders apply nalugu and turmeric, oil is touched to the hair, aarati is given, and suddenly it is real. These are intimate mornings of thirty to eighty people, and we cater them with a compact home crew – hot tiffins, filter coffee, and a lunch that does not take over the kitchen the family is trying to get ready in.

On the wedding morning itself comes the mangalasnanam – the auspicious bath taken at a time the priest sets, often before dawn. Nobody expects catering at a bath; they do expect breakfast afterwards. Our wedding-morning tiffin service – idli, pesarattu, upma, three chutneys – is on the table for close family before anyone leaves for the venue.

The wedding day, as we cook it

Gauri & Ganapati puja – while the bride and groom are in their separate pujas, early guests arrive hungry. The tiffin counters are already open.
Kashi yatra – the groom makes his mock departure for Kashi and is talked out of it. Guests are seated; service pauses; everyone watches.
Jeelakarra-bellam – at the exact muhurtham, cumin and jaggery paste is pressed to each other’s crowns. This is the moment of marriage in a Telugu wedding, and nothing of ours clatters through it.
Mangalya dharanam & talambralu – three knots, then the rice-shower everyone came for. As the talambralu fly, our crew moves to open the bhojanam lines.
The bhojanam – full banana-leaf service in the correct order of the leaf, elders seated and served first, both grandmothers’ non-negotiable dishes present and correct.
Appagintalu – the send-off. Sweets boxes are counted, ribboned and ready by the door before the tears start.

An evening reception – plated or buffet, with live counters – usually follows for the wider circle. About a third of our weddings run across two venues and two days; one event manager stays across the whole weekend.

నిశ్చితార్థం

Nischitartham – the engagement

50–200 guests · half a day · where it becomes official

The nischitartham is where two families stop being acquaintances and become sambandhulu. The priest reads the lagna patrika – the written fixing of the wedding muhurtham – the fathers exchange tambulalu trays of betel leaves, coconut and fruit, rings are exchanged, and every elder in the room takes a turn at blessing the couple.

It is a daytime occasion with a daytime appetite, so we serve it the way it is served at home, only larger: a seated tiffin-style spread – idli, pesarattu, upma, punugulu, three chutneys ground that morning – followed by sweets and filter coffee. Nothing heavy, nothing that steals the afternoon.

Because the guest list is often decided late (aunties confirm in their own time), we hold your numbers open until five days before – closer than for any other function we cater.

Every guest leaves with something in hand. We prepare boxed sweets – laddu, kaja or pootharekulu – labelled and stacked by the door, because sending people home empty-handed is simply not done.

హాఫ్ శారీ వేడుక

The half-saree function

80–300 guests · half a day · langa voni · her day entirely

The half-saree function marks a daughter’s coming of age – the day she first wears the langa voni, the half-saree, traditionally gifted by her maternal grandparents. She arrives in a langa as a girl; after the blessings and the aarati, she is draped in the voni and photographed like the main event she is. In many families it is the biggest function between her barasala and her wedding.

The food has to work for two audiences at once. The elders expect a proper festive lunch – pulihora, a good kura, pappu with ghee, a payasam that tastes of home. The teenager whose day it is wants a chaat corner for her friends, a dosa counter, and a sweets table she will actually photograph. We build both, and neither feels like an afterthought.

If you share the outfit colours with us in advance, we style the sweets table, the laddu-box ribbons and the counter linens to match. One mother told us her daughter – sixteen, and hard to impress – was impressed. We have not stopped mentioning it since.

బారసాల

Barasala – cradle & naming ceremony

40–120 guests · three to four hours · usually at home

Held around the twenty-first day or in the third month, the barasala is the baby’s first function: the namakaranam, where the chosen name is written in a plate of rice and whispered softly into the baby’s ear, and the cradle ceremony, where the little one is laid for the first time in the decorated uyyala while the older women sing cradle songs. Guests take turns rocking the cradle and tucking gifts and blessings beside the baby.

It is the gentlest event we cater, and we treat it that way. A compact home-service crew arrives quietly, sets a light festive lunch for forty to eighty, and keeps the payasam – made fresh that morning, never reheated – coming in small warm batches. No towering equipment, no noise in the kitchen during the naming, and the whole setup cleared away before the baby’s afternoon nap.

Families flying in from India often book this one from Hyderabad before they land in London. One call, one tasting attended by a local relative, done – it is exactly how our own family would want it to work.

గృహప్రవేశం

Gruhapravesham – entering the new home

40–150 guests · half a day · a house becomes a home

The gruhapravesham begins at a muhurtham chosen by the priest, with the kalash carried over the threshold and the family entering right foot first. Then comes the moment every Telugu household waits for: milk set to boil on the new stove until it rises and spills over – abundance, arriving on purpose. A Ganapati puja or a full Satyanarayana vratam usually follows, and then everyone you have ever met arrives for lunch.

Puja food has rules and we cook to them without being asked twice: the vratam prasadam prepared exactly as the priest specifies, and a pure-vegetarian lunch cooked without onion or garlic on request, on a dedicated line. Where the family prefers it, the entire event runs pure-veg with no non-veg on site at all.

New houses have unknown kitchens, and we plan for that. Our home crew brings its own burners, water and serving stations, checks your power and parking in advance, and serves on banana leaf or leaf-lined plates around whichever room the puja occupies. The house stays as new as it was when we arrived.

సంగీత్ & మెహందీ

Sangeet & Mehendi – the night before

100–400 guests · one evening · the fun one

The sangeet came to Telugu weddings from the north and made itself thoroughly at home. It is the one night the schedule belongs to the family, not the priest: choreographed dances that were rehearsed for weeks, uncles who join in anyway, mehendi artists working down one side of the room, and a dance floor that must never be interrupted by a dinner gong.

So we do not serve a formal dinner. We run counters that flow all evening – chaat and pani puri filled to order, dosas off the tawa, Irani chai with mirchi bajji recreating a Hyderabad street corner at the back of a Croydon banqueting hall. Guests eat when they are ready, in whatever order the dancing allows, and the food is as good at eleven as it was at seven.

Two practical promises. First: mehendi-friendly service – half your guests have wet hands for an hour, so our crew carries plates, fills water glasses and hands out straws without being flagged down. Second: the midnight mirchi bajji batch is non-negotiable. It is the thing people mention the next morning at the wedding.

Your occasion

Whichever day it is, start with the date

Tell us the occasion, the muhurtham if you have one, and a rough guest count. We reply within one working day – in English or Telugu.

Check your date See the menus first

Ceremonies we know by heart