You talk to the designer
No account manager sits between you and the person drawing your mandap. The same hand does the moodboard, the floor plan and the load-in.
The studio
Designing the moments a family keeps.
Jyothsna Katari Wedding Design & Decor LLC is a design studio in Clifton Park, New York. Telugu and Indian ceremonies, drawn around the ritual first and decorated second.
How it began
A filing date,
A filing date,
and a lot of
jasmine.
The paperwork is unromantic: Jyothsna Katari Wedding Design & Decor LLC was filed with the New York Department of State on 10 May 2022, DOS ID 6480940.
The address on that filing is a house in Clifton Park, twenty minutes north of Albany, and it is still where the floor plans get drawn. Everything else about the studio grew outward from there — Saratoga, the Hudson Valley, down the Thruway to New York City, across to New Jersey and up into New England.
There are not many people in upstate New York who can dress a living room for a Pellikuthuru on the Friday and a 300-seat ballroom for the reception on the Sunday. Those two jobs need completely different instincts. Holding both is the reason this studio exists.
The work now runs from home ceremonies in the Capital Region to full weekend builds out of state — among them the S & S wedding at The Palace in Somerset, New Jersey in 2025: a floral mandap, a mirrored aisle, and a reception stage that carried the same palette through the night.
- Founded
- May 2022, Clifton Park NY
- Registered
- NY DOS ID 6480940
- Designer
- Jyothsna Katari
- Specialities
- 8 ceremony types
There is no showroom. There is a workroom, a van, and a very careful list of what every venue in the region will and will not allow you to hang from its ceiling.
How we work
Four things that
Four things that
do not change.
Everything else on a wedding is negotiable — the palette, the flowers, the number of chairs. These four are not, and they are worth saying out loud before you book anyone.
01
Built for the ritual
We ask what happens, and in what order — the muhurtham, the talambralu, the jeelakarra bellam — before anyone talks about colour. Then we design so nothing sacred is blocked by a flower arrangement, and so both mothers can see.
02
One hand, every function
Friday’s Mehendi and Sunday’s reception belong to the same wedding. One palette carried across the days, one moodboard, one designer on site — and one person who answers the phone when the venue changes the load-in window.
03
Strike is included
Load-in is the glamorous half. We stay for the other one. The venue goes back exactly as we found it, at whatever hour the contract says — and it is priced into the quote from the start, never added to it afterwards.
04
Fresh or preserved, said out loud
Fresh where it is seen and smelled up close: garlands, the mandap, the bridal seat. Preserved or silk where it has to hang from a ceiling for three days or survive a July Haldi. Every line on the quote tells you which one you are getting.
2022
Designing since
6.4K
Instagram community
8
Ceremony specialities
100%
Custom-built, never templated
Four figures we can stand behind. You will not find an invented client count anywhere on this site.
Specializing in designing ones most cherished moments. Every detail matters for us.
That line has sat on her Instagram profile since the beginning, and it is the whole brief. A detail is the height of a chair so a grandmother can be helped into it. It is a garland cut short enough that the priest is not fighting it. It is the one strand of jasmine you can smell from the third row.
Pelli
Pasupu
Mehendi
Sangeet
Nischitartham
Seemantham
Barasala
Dhothi
What it is like
Working with
Working with
the studio
Six things you can expect between the first phone call and the last van door closing.
Numbers before commitment
Floor plans drawn against real venue dimensions, a mandap elevation, and a line-item quote. You see what every element costs before you sign anything.
We read the venue contract
Open flame, ceiling rigging, load-in windows, what may touch the walls. Better discovered in week three than at six in the morning on the day.
The muhurtham sets the clock
Build times are worked backwards from the priest’s timing, not forwards from whatever is convenient for the crew.
Your vendors get the schedule
Planner, photographer, caterer and DJ all receive the load-in plan. Your photographer should never have to guess where the light falls on the mandap.
A home counts as a venue
Living rooms and back gardens are a different skill from ballrooms — smaller scale, tighter frames, real furniture to work around. We use both constantly.
Plainly said
Four things we
Four things we
do not do
Knowing where a studio stops is more useful than another page of adjectives about what it offers.
We do not publish a price list
Every quote is built for your venue, your guest count and your ceremonies. A flat package only means some couples pay for things they were never going to use. The first conversation and the concept discussion cost nothing.
We do not double-book the same hour
Two weddings that need the same lead designer at the same moment is how details get missed. If your date clashes with an existing booking, you are told before you have paid anything.
We do not pass silk off as fresh
Preserved and silk florals have a real place — ceiling installations, outdoor Haldi in July, anything that has to stand for three days. What we will not do is let you find out on the day which one you bought.
We do not copy a board back to you
Most couples arrive with a Pinterest board full of contradictions, and that is the normal starting point. The concept stage turns it into one direction that suits your venue, your light and your rituals — not somebody else’s ballroom.
Where we work
Clifton Park,
Clifton Park,
and outward.
Most weekends are within three hours of the studio. Beyond that, travel is quoted per event and is genuinely welcome — a van packed the night before is not a problem.
Albany & the Capital Region
Saratoga Springs
Hudson Valley
New York City
New Jersey
Connecticut & New England
Destination — on request
Venue not booked yet? Say so early. Half of a good decor budget is spent deciding which room to spend it in, and the ceiling height of your shortlist changes what a mandap can be.
Before you write to us
Send the dates,
Send the dates,
not the whole plan.
You do not need a colour scheme, a Pinterest board or a finished guest list to start a conversation. Dates, the venue if you have one, and which ceremonies you are performing is enough to tell you honestly whether the studio is free and whether the budget and the idea belong to each other.
Everything after that — the palette, the mandap elevation, the argument about marigold versus roses — is the enjoyable part, and it is the part we are for.
Jyothsna Katari — event designer & curator, Clifton Park, New York
Now booking 2027 & 2028
Tell us about
Tell us about
your wedding.
Send the dates, the venue if you have one, and which ceremonies you are planning. You will hear back within one working day.