What does it take to turn Emirates Palace into a scene reminiscent of Lake Como? For event designer Jai Sharma, the answer lay in looking beyond the grandeur of the Abu Dhabi venue itself.
At the wedding Sharma designed for Dhruv Khatoria and Shalina Jhalani in February, the bride wanted to recreate the softness of her Lake Como proposal. Rather than compete with Emirates Palace, Sharma studied the gardens of an Italian chateau and translated their formal geometry into the layout of the event, turning the venue’s grandeur into the backdrop for something more intimate.
It is an approach that gets to the heart of Sharma’s philosophy about events: if you remember just the decor, perhaps the designer has not done his job properly.
Instead, the “event and experience curator”, who founded Jaipur-based experience design company Envelop, believes the real measure of a successful event is less tangible. It is a feeling, a story or a single, standout detail that stays with you long after the flowers have wilted and the furniture has been dismantled.
“People have this idea that an immersive experience is an LED room in London. It's not,” he says. “An immersive experience is getting the right feeling or story from the environment you are in.”
That philosophy led Sharma to create Envelop five years ago, working on weddings, brand launches, hospitality and real estate off-plan launches.
Sharma is quick to stress that the business is not a sprint. “I always say to my team that I’m running a marathon,” he says. “It looks fancy on Instagram, but we live in a high-pressure industry.”
The pressure, he argues, is precisely what makes event design intellectually demanding. Unlike architecture or interiors, where projects can take years to come to fruition, an event may be conceived, built and dismantled within weeks.
“Event design has evolved from just putting some throws, cushions and flowers against beautiful furniture,” he says. “We’re now creating environments from empty spaces.”
Yet the discipline still struggles for recognition. “Architects and interior designers have received a lot of intellectual worth, but when it comes to event designers, we’re still looked upon as someone who just puts flowers on tables. And that’s not true.”
For Sharma, every detail matters, from lighting, food, fragrance and music to entertainment and staff uniforms. “The environment is designed by every single element that stimulates the five senses,” he says.
His own route into the industry has been far from conventional. After studying engineering at the Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani in India, he completed a double master’s at Columbia University, in New York in 2016, before joining Intel and Apple in California.
Then one conversation changed everything. When his grandfather told him he wasn't sure how many years he had left to live, Sharma packed up his life and returned to India a month later.
Unsure of what to do there, he returned to what he knew and loved: events. At Columbia, he says had become known as the “Indian boy who threw the best parties”.
His first venture upon returning to India was to open a bar followed by being commissioned by a drinks company to help with a country-wide launch. He was hooked. “I never realised all of this would boil down to Envelop,” he says. “I didn’t even know the term 'experience design' existed.”
Ask him what separates a beautiful event from an experiential one, and Sharma's answer is simple: “Logic.”
Decoration, he believes, is only the starting point. The story comes first; everything else follows.
This philosophy was evident at the Abu Dhabi wedding he designed for Khatoria and Jhalani earlier this year.
“I don’t like to fight with architecture,” he says. “What’s the point? You should make the most out of the space and venue you’re getting into.”
To echo the Italian chateau that he studied, seating was arranged to mirror its formal geometry, while dinner became a relaxed garden picnic. He saved one surprise for a key moment, however. “In Indian weddings, there's the varmala ceremony where the bride and groom exchange garlands, which is the moment they are deemed married.”
Sharma designed the space so that the couple entered from opposite sides, coming together in front of a screen, which opened to reveal three arches covered in foliage, mirroring the proposal. His team had placed postcards depicting the original Lake Como photograph on each table, so everyone recognised the significance immediately. People were in tears, he says. “The smallest detail of a picture turned into a moment that had such strong emotional value.”
Sharma is equally interested in what can be achieved without a vast budget. At one intimate wedding for just 20 guests, he drew on a story about the bride’s favourite perfume, which had accidentally broken during a skiing trip in Japan. Her partner had later tracked down a replacement in London.
For the welcome dinner, Sharma turned the story into an interpretation of kintsugi, the Japanese art of repairing broken ceramics with gold. For the dinner, the plates were deliberately broken and repaired.
“The star is the story,” he says. “To get the story, the medium is a table detail. That’s it. That's immersive.”
Budget, he insists, is not the determining factor. “Money has no direct proportion to an experience being great.”
This belief also informs Envelop’s deliberately selective approach. With a new Dubai office, Sharma is still intent on limiting the number of projects his team take on each year. Growth for growth’s sake, he says, would dilute the work. “It will still look beautiful, but it will not be meaningful.”
One side of the company deals with “ritual design”. At Trevi, a restaurant in Jaipur, he created the story of a mythical maharaja travelling to Italy before returning home to host a picnic in his gardens, which informed the interiors, landscaping and menu. Sharma created a custom coin that guests receive with their bill to toss into the restaurant’s fountain, as in the Roman original. Although a tiny gesture, it leaves a memory. “It’s just working on the feeling,” he says. “Even if the bill pinched them, tossing the coin made it all OK.”
Ultimately, Sharma returns to the question that sits at the heart of his work: “When you attend an event and three weeks later I ask you about it, what do you remember first? Isn’t that the vibe?”
A wedding, restaurant, property launch or brand experience may appear to be different disciplines, but to Sharma, they are variations on the same idea. “They’re all experience design,” he says. “They’re all about what a human feels in a certain environment. They’re all leading to memories.”
Perhaps, he suggests, that is why people are returning to tailoring, books and handmade objects. “The things that have always existed have become popular now,” he says. “If you’re authentic, everything will hit harder.”
