Maia Weston and Neil Patel had a classic meet-cute. It was September 2019, and they were at a wedding in Charleston. Neil was the groom’s college roommate, and Maia was a friend of the bride. Although the two had mutual friends and had both attended the University of Georgia, they had never met until then. “We found ourselves sitting next to each other on a sofa at the after-party following the welcome party and couldn’t stop talking,” Maia recalls.

Over the next few months, they kept in touch over text. In November, they met for their first date at Aria Wine Bar in New York’s West Village neighborhood. “Months of non-stop texting since our Charleston meeting had built up a certain amount of anticipation, and I think we were both nervous about whether the evening would measure up,” Maia says. Spoiler alert: It did.

“We didn’t want the night to end,” Maia adds, recalling how they went from dinner to Lower Manhattan dive bars, “until it was well past time to call it a night.”

Maia, a marketing and brand strategist who works with furniture and interior brands, and Neil, an allergist-immunologist, kept dating over the next few months. At the time, Neil was interviewing for his medical residency. Then the pandemic hit, and Maia and Neil spent the first few uncertain months of spring 2020 living together in Neil’s family home in Atlanta. It was just the two of them, because his family had relocated back to Birmingham in the UK, where they are from. “It was a strange and disorienting time,” Maia explains. “But we were solid, even as little else was.”

“In some ways, being forced into that kind of closeness so early told us everything we needed to know,” she adds. Soon after that, Neil moved to Washington, D.C. for his residency at Children’s National Hospital. After two years of dating long-distance, Maia moved there to join him. They now live in Brooklyn.

In May 2024, Neil proposed to Maia on a trip to Santa Margherita Ligure on the Italian Riviera, just outside of Portofino. The trip “had been mostly long walks and lazy afternoons by the pool,” shares Maia. “The setup began, unknown to me, in Florence, where we’d spotted disposable Kodak cameras for sale, and I suggested we each buy one and turn it into a friendly competition: whoever took the best photos by the end of the trip would win,” she explains.

When they planned the trip, Neil knew it would be an ideal place to propose. “However, as we arrived in Santa Margherita, even though I had the ring, the perfect location, the fancy hotel… I still had no idea of how exactly I wanted to propose,” Neil says.

He knew he wanted to have photos of the proposal, but he also knew that he and Maia would prefer the moment to just be between the two of them. Once Maia suggested the photography competition, he came up with a plan. He suggested they take a pre-dinner stroll in a park. Once there, after taking a selfie and a couple of photos of the park, he asked Maia, “Do you really want to win this competition?” and she said yes. He replied, “Well, in that case, I’ll give you the winning photo,” and got down on one knee with the ring in his hand. They took another selfie after she said yes, and Maia used the photos to design their save-the-dates.

Then, of course, came time to plan the wedding. The location was easy: Maia always imagined getting married in her hometown of New Orleans, and Neil was on the same page. The city was also the perfect locale for the kind of wedding Maia and Neil wanted, one that prioritized “good food, good music, and an exceptional guest experience,” Maia says.

“Planning two ceremonies, two celebrations, and a merger of two cultures is a lofty undertaking,” Maia shares. They were able to pull it off with the guidance of their wedding planner, Krystle Burger of Everly Event Planning & Design. “There is so much revelry in both of our cultures and we wanted to reflect that,” Maia explains, referring to their Indian and New Orleans backgrounds.

The wedding took place on October 17 and October 18, 2025. On Friday, they had a welcome party at a friend’s home, and a Hindu ceremony at Hotel Peter & Paul, a 19th-century Catholic church that has been converted into a venue space. “I loved the irony of having a Hindu wedding set against the lightly patinated walls, stained glass, and subtle grandeur of a former church. Hindu weddings are known for their extravagance, and this space felt like the perfect backdrop,” shares Maia. To kick off the Hindu ceremony, they had a Baraat, in which the groom processes to the wedding venue with his family and friends celebrating along the way while Indian musicians perform.

“When planning the Baraat, it occurred to me that all of the essential elements of a Baraat are also found in traditional New Orleans second lines,” Neil shares. He reached out to Knockaz Brass Band, who came on board to lead a second line that would function as his Baraat. “They were happy to oblige and put on an amazing show for us, which many of the guests were thrilled by,” he says.

Pop Nola built the Mandap (the four-post structure within which an Indian wedding ceremony is performed) and an entrance gate for their Hindu ceremony, and Antigua Floral did the floral decorations. Maia and Neil also combined their cultures when it came to the food for their Friday celebration, with a luncheon catered by Maia’s family’s friends Arvinder and Pardeep Vilkhu’s restaurant Saffron, which combines Indian and New Orleans culinary traditions.

For Saturday, they chose Brennan’s in the French Quarter. “The Chanteclair Room at Brennan’s is a design lover’s dream—there are hand-painted gouache murals of Mardi Gras floats making their way down the avenue, dancing figures, and tropical scenes that are whimsical and sophisticated and celebratory all at once. I am also a sucker for the latticework and checkered floors that adorn the space. The courtyard gave us our second ceremony in a space that feels like a typical New Orleans backyard with overgrown elements all around you,” Maia says.

Lighting was also key. “For Saturday, since we went from day to night, I planned the schedule around phases of the sky. I looked into the exact timing of nautical twilight and built the day around it: our ceremony began at sundown, and by the time it ended, it was civil twilight. The second line went through nautical twilight, and by the time it ended, the city faded into dark. We watched the sun disappear completely throughout the procession before moving inside for the reception and dancing,” says Maia.

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