Real Weddings: Shereen and Gotham

Shereen Ladha, a professional dancer and head of strategy at an ad agency, first met Gotham Ratnaraj, a real estate agent, in 2011, when they were individually scouted to compete in a dance group that made it to the final round of Canada’s Got Talent. They bonded over their shared love of dance, fashion and art but didn’t begin dating until 2015. They moved in together in 2017, then bought their first home four years later. In 2024, Ratnaraj proposed in Barcelona. A five-day wedding merging the couple’s Tamil Hindu and North Indian Muslim cultures followed in 2025, filled with performances, curated outfits and an 18-minute choreographed dance show. Here’s how it all came together.

Shereen: In 2011, I was scouted to join a new dance group that was being formed for the purpose of auditioning for Canada’s Got Talent.

Gotham: We had our first rehearsal at York University. I was the first person to show up, and Shereen was the second one there. So we just started chatting.

Shereen: Gotham and I became friends first. We spent a lot of time together in rehearsals, hanging out with the other dancers. After rehearsal, sometimes we’d go out for drinks, just the two of us. I lived in Richmond Hill, and Gotham was in Ajax. Since our rehearsals were usually downtown or in the west end, we’d carpool together.

Gotham: There was definitely an attraction there, but we had a lot of things going on in our lives at the time.

Shereen: We always knew there was something between us. I liked Gotham, but we weren’t open about our feelings at first. We were just so young—in our early 20s. Every spare moment we had was spent doing something related to dance. We toured and did some huge shows, like performing at Raptors games.

Gotham: In 2015, I reflected on my feelings about Shereen. I wondered whether it was just situational, because we were so involved with dance. Even though that’s what originally brought us together, I knew my feelings for her were a lot more intense. I needed to tell her how I felt. We actually hashed it out over BlackBerry Messenger.

Shereen: We went back and forth over the course of a couple of months, having conversations about how we felt and where we saw ourselves going. We were both ready to put in the level of commitment we needed to make our relationship a thing. By the end of 2015, we were official.

Gotham: Our friends in the dance community already knew there was something going on between us. Turns out, we weren’t as good as we thought at hiding our feelings for each other.

Shereen: That same year, in 2015, we formally left the dance company, and Gotham and I started a YouTube channel called DancewithSL. We’d post my choreography and tutorials for Bollywood and South Asian–style dances, and Gotham would film, direct and edit.

Gotham: I realized that what I enjoyed about dance was the social aspect of it. Performance itself didn’t give me as much joy as it used to. I was also really good at the technical components of running the channel. My dad was a photographer.

Shereen: We were producing one video a week, and several of them went viral. We were featured on BuzzFeed, HuffPost, CTV News and Teen Vogue. We gained over 150,000 subscribers and travelled all over the world to do workshops and stage shows. This was all alongside our full-time jobs. I had a career in creative strategy, and Gotham was working in tech as a business analyst.

Gotham: Running the channel together really solidified our relationship. I felt lucky to be able to do it with my partner and best friend.

Shereen: Gotham and I are very artistically aligned. We have similar vision and tastes, which I think is what made us gravitate toward each other. One of us can mention a reference from a movie we’ve both seen, and we both get it right away. Fashion and style really define our relationship. It’s something we both enjoy and something that has bonded us over the years.

Gotham: In 2017, I moved out of my parents’ house to Shereen’s one-bedroom condo in Yorkville. I had a dog by then—Remy, a Staffy that I got in January of 2016. But my family was really attached to him, so we shared Remy between our two homes. Living with Shereen was a good test of our relationship. We learned how to communicate better and to bring up issues when they bothered us in order to see where the other person was coming from. I think we both grew a lot from it.

Shereen: Being with Gotham felt easy. We’d been best friends for so long. But, during the pandemic, we were both taking calls out loud in our apartment, and we knew we had to upgrade. So we bought a house in Dundas West in 2021.

Gotham: Then, in 2022, I did a career pivot and became a realtor. We also wound down the YouTube channel during Covid. The world of dance on social platforms had changed a lot, and it didn’t feel like it aligned with us artistically anymore. It felt right as the next step in our journey.

Shereen: We didn’t really talk about getting married at any point. I thought we’d just stay common-law. I was happy being in a partnership with Gotham forever and didn’t feel the need to get married.

Gotham: I always knew I wanted to marry Shereen. By 2024, I felt ready to propose. All the other parts of our life were going well, like our careers and owning our home. It just felt right. So I designed her a ring with an emerald-cut diamond, which I thought really represented Shereen because she’s so timeless and classic. I didn’t get her input on it, but I figured I knew her well enough. One of our good friends from the dance group was getting married in Spain that May, so I planned to propose on that trip, after the wedding.

Shereen: I had no idea that any of this was happening. I did not have a Pinterest boards of rings, and there were never any hints from Gotham.

Gotham: The wedding was in Sitges, a 40-minute drive southwest of Barcelona. Shereen and I planned to spend a couple of days in Barcelona afterward. We booked a hotel with a beautiful rooftop patio with a great view of the Barcelona skyline. The rooftop was intimate and private, so I knew it would be the perfect spot to pop the question. I let the hotel staff know when I was planning to propose, and they helped to keep guests from the rooftop during that time and brought up some cava for us to enjoy. At first, we were just hanging out, having a drink, and Shereen was reading an article in a zine we had picked up. Then I gave her a roll of film and asked her to open it up. I’d had a graphic designer friend help me make it. The reel had five negatives—photos of us from all parts of our relationship. The last one had an image of a bridge and said, “I love you. Will you marry me?” Then I got down on one knee and pulled out the ring.

Shereen: I was genuinely shocked. I could not believe it. Gotham hid everything so well. I felt so happy and excited. I don’t think I felt like I wanted or needed to get married until Gotham asked. We enjoyed our engagement for two months, then we started planning in July. We toyed with the idea of eloping but got a lot of resistance from our families. We realized that eloping would have done a disservice to both of our histories, religions and cultures.

Gotham: We felt like there were traditions that we needed to honour. Shereen’s family is Muslim and North Indian, and mine is Hindu and Tamil from Sri Lanka. I think we would have regretted it if we had eloped.

Shereen: Gotham and I decided to lean into the wedding, using it as an opportunity to highlight our love of art, fashion and performance. We ended up planning three pre-wedding events: two mehndi nights, one for my side of the family and another for Gotham’s side; a sangeet where we’d combine our two different cultures plus other South Asian cultural traditions; then two religious ceremonies. For my side, we’d do a nikkah, then for Gotham’s side, we’d do a Hindu ceremony.

Gotham: We put a lot of care into selecting our outfits. It was a fun process, sketching and pulling together references, looking at old family photos and trying to craft our looks together.

Shereen: I went to India with my parents to source some of our outfits. It felt like I tried on every single wedding outfit in Mumbai. For the sangeet, I chose a modern design from Mahima Mahajan. I paired it with jewellery I bought from stalls on the street in Udaipur, which cost less than $50 in total. It was a fun high-low North Indian and Rajasthani look.

Gotham: I called Shereen on FaceTime for help choosing my looks. For the sangeet, I dressed in a complementary colour and pattern by the same designer, since she also does men’s outfits. Then I got a kurta from Pakistan to wear with it. Shereen also got me some camel leather shoes from a stall in Jaipur.

Shereen: For the nikkah, I chose an ivory saree by Seema Gujral with 3D flower appliqués. It’s all handcrafted. The craftsmanship in India is what makes these pieces so special. Instead of traditional Indian jewellery, I paired it with more simple Western-style jewellery so that the saree would be the focus.

Gotham: I knew I wanted more of a classic black-tux aesthetic for the nikkah, but with a twist so that it wasn’t too traditional. On a trip to Montreal, Shereen and I went to Ssense and I found a loose box-cut Ernest W. Baker blazer and matched it with pants from a Korean brand called System. Then I had the dress shirt custom-made with extended 10-inch collars. I wanted to do something fun for my footwear, so I wore Margiela tabis. I didn’t want to do a traditional bow tie, so I got an idea from VSP, a consignment store on Dundas West where Shereen and I are regulars, to do a ribbon in a loose bow, kind of like a bolo tie. That made the outfit look relaxed but put together.

Shereen: For the Hindu Tamil ceremony, I had two sarees. Gotham’s dad actually picked out the first one since he was going to Chennai. The brief we gave him was just “yellow,” and he did great. Then I picked the second one, a red saree from a shop in Scarborough. We paired them with a fashion-forward, non-traditional hairstyle that incorporated flowers.

Gotham: I bought my Hindu Tamil outfits from Nucreation, a shop in Little India. It was a traditional pattu kurta top with a custom sherwani coat and matching shoes. The bottom was a traditional pattu vetti made of silk with gold threading.

Shereen: Our first event was the mehndi, which has more significance in my culture. We wanted to host an event at my grandparents’ place in Richmond Hill, where our family has hosted a lot of pre-wedding events. My grandpa passed away two years ago, and he was an entertainer and a lover of the arts, so hosting an event in his house was our way of honouring him. The significance of the mehndi is for the bride to get ready to be married. I got henna done, and one of the traditions is hiding the groom’s initials in my designs for Gotham to find. We also did a ritual of placing a pineapple in each corner of the room to ward off the evil eye.

Gotham: The second mehndi, for my family, was at my parents’ place. Mehndi isn’t a common practice where we’re from, but we wanted to do something for my family since they were flying in from all over the world: Norway, London, Switzerland, Denmark. A lot of my family are women, so we wanted to celebrate and honour them. We hired a henna artist to come and do henna for everyone who wanted it.

Shereen: The third event was the sangeet at the Verdi Convention Centre in Mississauga. We planned for this to be our big party by not having a larger reception at the end of the week. At other Indian weddings, we’re usually tired going into a big reception after days of religious ceremonies. We did a few rituals, like a trousseau, where Gotham’s family gifts the bride makeup, jewellery and items for their new married life—but I actually just picked a few things off of Ssense for myself. We also did a ritual called sapatia, which is a competition between the husband and wife to step on a clay pot filled with coins, grain and turmeric to symbolize prosperity and health. Whoever steps on the pot first is the ruler of the house. Gotham won!

Gotham: Aside from those rituals, the sangeet was all about performances. Shereen and I made our entrance doing a choreographed dance. We made our own mash-up of the Hindi and Tamil versions of the song “Chaiyya Chaiyya” by A. R. Rahman. Then 12 of our dance friends, who we strategically sat at the same table, joined in.

Shereen: Our guests were definitely expecting a show. The second group dance was an 18-minute performance with different songs and combinations of people. Some songs were just me dancing, some were me and the girls, then just Gotham and the boys or me and Gotham. It was all very Bollywood style.

Gotham: We’d been rehearsing that routine with our friends for six weeks prior to the wedding. We loved being reunited with all of our dance friends who were with us at the start of our journey. Three of them were on Canada’s Got Talent with us, and others we’d danced with in different companies. It was really meaningful and nostalgic for us. We hadn’t been able to dance with our friends like that since before the pandemic. I felt relieved once the dance performance was over, though. I just wanted to make sure that we killed it, which we did. But it was exciting too, to be able to perform for our loved ones.

Shereen: After the big dance performance, there were speeches. Then we had some musicians perform. There was live tabla, a flautist, a keyboard player and two singers. It ended with a really intimate set where some of our guests gathered to sit on cushions on the floor, close to the musicians. People were singing along to the songs. Then we opened the dance floor. It’s funny when you bring a bunch of professional dancers into a room together—everything becomes a performance. The evening went until about 2 or 3 a.m.

Gotham: The next event was the nikkah, which is a Muslim marriage ceremony, for Shereen’s family.

Shereen: We had it at the Ismaili Centre, Toronto, in North York, next to the Aga Khan Museum. They’re both important cultural landmarks to the Ismaili community here. Architecturally, it’s a beautiful, stunning building that connects to our love of art. The nikkah ceremony was short, about 45 minutes. Our guests entered and took their seats, then we did a ring exchange. The most important part is that the nikkah—an official Islamic marriage contract—is recited. There needs to be an officiant who is trained and on a list of approved nikkah reciters. Luckily, my uncle happened to be an approved reciter. It was wonderful to have that family connection.

Gotham: That day we also signed our marriage contract. We served our guests some light refreshments afterward.

Shereen: We were finished by 4:30 p.m. and hadn’t planned anything after that. But one of my friends told us we couldn’t just go home. So about ten of our close friends decided to go to Rosie’s Burgers in our full wedding outfits.

Gotham: We took a few film photos inside Rosie’s Burgers. We felt like Michael B. Jordan going for burgers after winning his Oscar.

Shereen: That turned out to be one of the nicest moments of the wedding. We were doing something unofficial, just for us.

Gotham: The next day was the Hindu religious ceremony. I was up at 5 a.m. at my parents’ house in Whitby. Shereen’s brother and I did some rituals together like getting our thalapa—traditional turbans—wrapped around our heads. Then there were some blessings and rituals that involved fire, called puja. Our elders would light a fire on a tray to bless us as we made our journey. We even got Remy involved—we bought him a custom kurta from Etsy for the occasion. Then we went back to the Verdi Convention Centre, where we were greeted with a baraat, a procession for the groom’s family, with live musicians.

Shereen: I wasn’t involved until Gotham reached the venue. The bride joins the groom onstage, and we do prayers together. Then there’s a costume change—I leave and get into my Koorai saree, which is a wedding saree that’s traditionally red. What’s cool is that all the close family members on the bride’s side who are married actually wear their Koorai sarees too, so Gotham’s mom wore her saree from when she got married.

Gotham: We had to look for a ring in a pot of milk, and whoever found it first would be the ruler of the household (there is a common theme to these traditions). I won this one too! I also tied a thaali, which is a gold chain, around the bride’s neck to symbolize the bond of marriage. A priest recites vows as we walk seven laps around a fire. Then we exchange flower garlands and look in a mirror together for the first time as husband and wife. Our guests then lined up on both sides of the aisle and threw rose petals at us while we walked down the aisle together, hand in hand.

Shereen: The Hindu ceremony was about five hours, from 9 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. We served our guests breakfast and lunch.

Gotham: I thought I would be exhausted after doing all of those events, but honestly, I had so much energy from spending time with all our loved ones each day. Between all of the events, about 500 guests attended. I think that, if everything was on one day, it would have been overwhelming, but being able to spread it across a few days helped.

Shereen: It was emotionally overwhelming for us to process that amount of love and joy. We were so happy that we were able to connect so many things we love into our wedding, like our cultures, our faith and our art.

Gotham: Married life has been easy so far. I thought things wouldn’t be different because we’ve lived together for a long time and that it would be more of a government thing. But going through the rituals made me see our relationship as a greater commitment.

Shereen: We approach our relationship in a different way now. Having the wedding made it feel like our marriage is something to be celebrated, valued, nurtured and worked on every single day.

Gotham: We went on our honeymoon to Japan earlier this month. We had previously gone on a trip there in 2019 and loved it. My original plan was actually to propose on a trip to Japan, before our friends announced their wedding in Spain. Since we’d already done a lot of the bigger cities, we did the less touristy stuff: Hakone, Kanazawa, Naoshima Island, Kojima and Kyoto.

Shereen: Going through the process of planning the wedding helped Gotham and I rediscover our passion for creating again. We’re launching a new company together as a side gig where we’ll work as a director duo to shoot everything from commercials to music videos. The directing company represents our next chapter together.

Cheat Sheet

Photography: Irvin Sidhu Videography: Cineverse Dates: October 21 to 26, 2025 Wedding venues: Ismaili Centre, Toronto; Verdi Convention Centre Decor: XO Decors Musicians: Nishat Khair DJ: DJ Sid Shereen’s hair and makeup: Glam by Mona Gotham’s grooming: Halsey Gonzalves, Danny Isaac, Fitting Room TO Saree tying: Perfect Pleats by Anusha Thalapa tying: Safa Turban Thaali: VHV Jewellers Shereen’s outfits: Seema Gujral, Mahima Mahajan, Aisha’s Silks Gotham’s outfits: Nucreation Fashions, Ernest W. Baker, Maison Margiela, Mahima Mahajan Rings: Diamondboi