
The Team
- Caterer — Bollywood Bistro — @bollywood_bistro
- Dhol Player — GANESH JAGTAP LIVE MUSIC — @ganeshjagtap4866
- Hair — Afra — @makeupbyaafra
- Mehndhi/Henna — Sravani — @hennabysravani
- Photographer — Regeti’s Photography — @theregetis
- Venue — Top of the Town — @topofthetown_dc
Nikitaa and Durgesh celebrated their Haldi and Mehndi night at Top of the Town in Arlington, Virginia, a rooftop venue with a view of the city that became the backdrop for one of the most joyful nights of their wedding weekend.
There is a specific kind of energy to a Haldi and Mehndi night. It is not the ceremony itself, and it is not yet the reception. It is the in-between — the night when family who flew in from out of town finally sees each other, when the outfits that have been planned for months come out of garment bags, and when a couple gets a rare minute to simply look around a room and register who showed up for them.
What happens during a Haldi and Mehndi celebration
At Top of the Town, the rooftop was set with pink and gold drapery, marigold garlands, and gold lanterns, all of it framed by the Arlington skyline behind it. That setting mattered, but it was never the whole story. The real content of the evening was in the details around it — the application mehndi, Nikita’s father Rajesh reaching in to press haldi onto Nikita’s cheek, guests in yellow and green and pink kurtas laughing their way through the games that always seem to happen at these nights.
Dhol player Ganesh Jagtap kept the energy moving, and the food from Bollywood Bistro fed a rooftop full of people who had traveled to be there. Vendors like these do not show up in most of the photographs, but their work shapes the rhythm of the whole night — the same way it did for Kavya and Kyle’s wedding at Stonewall Golf Club, where a vendor team working in sync made everything else possible.
Why the small moments matter more than the wide shots
A Sangeet or a Haldi night can absolutely be photographed as a room full of color and choreography. That is not wrong. But years from now, the photograph that stops someone in their scrolling is rarely the wide shot of the whole rooftop.
It is a mother leaning in. A hand resting on another hand. Someone laughing just outside the frame. The particular expression Nikitaa made while her friends and family were celebrating all around her. The way Durgesh looked at her when nobody was asking him to look at anything.
By the end of the night, when the whole rooftop erupted into flower petals thrown into the air over Nikitaa and Durgesh, the picture told the truth of the evening better than any posed portrait could have — a family and a room full of friends all in one frame, mid-laugh, mid-throw, completely unposed.
This is the same instinct that shaped a night we photographed at Shatakshi and Madhu’s Sangeet at The Omni Homestead Resort — the belief that a sangeet is really a collection of small, in-between moments wearing a big, colorful night as a disguise. It is also why we tell couples, the way we explored in Isha and Kevin’s wedding story, that the best photographs often happen in the gaps nobody planned for.
Why this matters for the family, not just the couple
When Nikitaa and Durgesh first hired us, The Regeti’s, they said they were drawn to the vivid, timeless quality of the work and were trusting us with their wedding. After their first preview arrived, Nikitaa’s father Rajesh sent a message calling the photographs their precious memories, and told us he would be sharing them with family and friends back home.
That sentence has stayed with us. Because the job was never simply to hand two people a gallery of photographs. It is to preserve pieces of a family carefully enough that those pieces can travel — to another home, another country, and eventually another generation who will look at a rooftop in Arlington and understand exactly what it felt like to be there.
A joyful beginning to the weekend
The Haldi and Mehndi night at Top of the Town was only the opening chapter of Nikitaa and Durgesh’s wedding weekend, but it set the tone for everything that followed — loud, colorful, and full of people who came from far away simply because they loved them.









More from the blog
- Aditi and Connal’s Engagement Session: When Glenstone Said No and the Morning Said Yes
- Why We Encourage Every Couple to Have an Engagement Session
- Shatakshi and Madhu’s Wedding at The Omni Homestead Resort: A Bihari-Telugu Celebration
- Shatakshi and Madhu’s Sangeet Night at The Omni Homestead Resort
- Kavya and Kyle’s Wedding at Stonewall Golf Club: A Lesson in Teamwork and Timing
- Anjali and Eric’s Sunrise Engagement Session in Occoquan, Virginia
- Isha and Kevin’s Wedding: The Beer Bicycle, the Bangles, and the Post in the Ground
- Maya and Zach’s Lotus Garden Engagement Session

