We love brides that plan ahead! A long, long time ago I heard the sweetest voice on the phone inquiring about our photography. It was Kriti and she was calling more than a year in advance about having us capture her wedding. She didn’t have any other details, other than she wanted us to be there to capture her special day!
Fast forward to this blog post and we are happy to kick off this three-part wedding on our blog this week! Kriti and Amit are a super sweet couple! They are chill, fun, always making us laugh and are great sports and are up for anything when it comes to getting “the most awesome shots”.
The Mehndi night is the first event we usually capture at a traditional Indian wedding. The Mehndi is applied to the hands and feet of the bride, as well as, the family and guests because it is not only beautiful, it is also really fun to get! As you can see, Kriti was all smiles and enjoyed getting her Mehndi by none other than Ravie Kattaura. Ravie is a Fremont local who is one of the best Mehndi artists in the Bay Area. Kriti’s hair and makeup was done by Myrium who is awesome!
What we go for when we photograph a Mehndi party is first to capture candid images. At this point, we want people to get used to us. We don’t want to pose people or make them feel uncomfortable. It’s all about getting to know the bride’s immediate family, her parents, and her closest friends. The people at the Mehndi are in “the bride’s inner circle” so it definitely is important to get to know them and let them feel comfortable with us since we really want them to act normal like we are not even there.
When we see a moment where we have a great shot that is candid, we then start to add in some shots that are “looking at the camera”. We will simply tell the bride or any subject for that matter to look up and we capture that exact moment they do look up so it is natural and not overly posed feeling. We then go back to shooting candids, fly on a wall type shots, because we really only want 1-2 posed shots for every 10 candids, so we basically shoot with a 10-20% rule for posed pictures, with the rest all candid.
Waiting for mom or dad come over to hug and kiss their daughter can basically never happen unless you direct it. We give instructions to the family to be able to get the images we think they will enjoy most like mom or dad giving their daughter a hug. We don’t forget their siblings either. We get lots of funny expressions and what we think are some great memories!
When the hands are completed by the Mehndi artist, we like to take the bride outside and get some portraits of her. In this case, we could not have come at a better time. Just five minutes after bringing Kriti outside for some shots, it started raining again, so it was perfect that we at least, had those few minutes to capture her portraits. It’s also a great time for the bride to stretch her legs, get some fresh air, and also make use of the hair and makeup she’s had done.
After shooting at the bride’s home, we headed over to the restaurant where the bride’s side was holding their Sangeet night. Stay tuned for more of this gorgeous Indian wedding and please leave us a comment if you like all the information we gave in this blog post!
