Though their parents had been friends for years, Pusarla Venkata Sindhu and Venkata Datta Sai barely interacted until Oct. 6, 2022, when they happened to be seated next to each other on a flight from Hyderabad, India, where they both live, to Delhi, India.
“It was a two-hour flight and we were talking and talking and finally ended up exchanging numbers,” Ms. Sindhu said.
Ms. Sindhu, who also goes by PV, immediately liked that Mr. Datta was knowledgeable about various sports, like Formula 1 car racing, soccer and golf. Ms. Sindhu, 29, is a professional badminton player with two Olympic and five World Badminton Championship medals. According to Forbes, Ms. Sindhu, who has four million followers on Instagram, is one of the world’s highest-paid female athletes. She was born and raised in Hyderabad, where she received a bachelor’s degree in economics, commerce and civics, and an M.B.A. from St. Ann’s College For Women.
Mr. Datta, 30, is the executive director of Posidex Technologies, a data analytics company, and the managing director of Sour Apple Asset Management, an investment firm; both are based in Hyderabad. He was born in Hyderabad and grew up in several cities, including Mysore, India, Delhi and Singapore. He has a bachelor’s degree in finance and economics from FLAME University in Pune, India.
After the flight with Ms. Sindhu, Mr. Datta continued to Europe for a biking trip through the Balkans with friends. During his vacation, he and Ms. Sindhu talked constantly.
“It was almost like God had sent a message,” Mr. Datta said. “I’ve met hundreds of people on flights. I’m not getting married to them.”
Despite the spark he felt, he was hesitant about dating Ms. Sindhu because of her popularity in India.
“She’s like the LeBron James of this side of the world,” Mr. Datta said. “You can’t go out on a date with her in India. Too many people recognize her. Then it’s ‘PV Sindhu has gone out with this man.’ I didn’t think I wanted to have my life in public so much.”
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When he returned from Europe, Mr. Datta invited Ms. Sindhu to play golf with him. Since she didn’t know how to play, he taught her, which helped them bond. For the next couple of months, they talked for hours every day. In late fall 2022, Mr. Datta told Ms. Sindhu that he liked her and began to accept the idea of a life in the public eye.
“We’ll make it work,” he recalled Ms. Sindhu telling him. “Trust my hunch and my gut on this.”
They did not have an official engagement, but in August 2024, after the Paris Olympics ended, Ms. Sindhu told Mr. Datta she wanted to get married before embarking on the next four years of her career — in advance of the 2028 Summer Olympics — and he agreed.
They were married by Chandrashekhar Shastri, a Hindu priest, on Dec. 22 at Raffles Udaipur Resort in Udaipur, India, in front of 150 people. The event followed two days of celebrations, including a sangeet, during which friends and family performed, and a mehndi party, during which henna paste was painted onto Ms. Sindhu.
On Sunday, the bride kicked off the pre-wedding rituals with a ceremony at 5 a.m. After a traditional lunch in the afternoon, the couple exchanged rings and arranged a fireworks and color bombs display for the guests, timed to coincide with the sunset. The wedding ceremony started around 10 p.m., to ensure that the bride and groom would become wife and husband at the auspicious time of 11:40 p.m., chosen according to their birth charts. The evening wrapped around 4 a.m.
“Sindhu plays 16 hours, 18 hours a day,” said Priya Maganti, the founder of RVR Eventz & Design, who was hired to plan the wedding. “Any other bride would have passed out, but Sindhu could do it because she plays like that. She has stamina.”
Throughout the festivities, Ms. Sindhu wore about 14 different looks by some of India’s best-known brands, including Sabyasachi, Manish Malhotra and Abu Jani Sandeep Khosla. For the ceremony, she wore a tissue sari and a veil with her and Mr. Datta’s names embroidered on it.
“I wanted a long veil where it’s like a fairy tale wedding,” Ms. Sindhu said.
Two days after the wedding, the couple held a reception with a buffet for 3,500 or so guests at Anvaya Conventions in Hyderabad. Throughout the day, uninvited fans of Ms. Sindhu showed up outside the event, asking to be allowed in. Ms. Maganti said she hired 20 security guards and organized 12 management teams to control the crowd.
“It was all fully, fully Indian, proper Indian old-school,” Mr. Datta said. “Between her and me, we’re both very traditional. It was a lot of love, affection, family and friends.”
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