An Indian Christian Wedding in London: Church, Sehra and a Reception That Did Not Stop

One wedding, photographed from a front room in the morning to the dance floor at midnight. A Catholic church ceremony, an Indian family, and every custom kept on both sides of it. I am putting the whole day up in order rather than a set of highlights, because when you are choosing a photographer for an Asian wedding the useful question is not whether they can make one good picture. It is whether they were there for all of it.

The morning, at home

The groom’s sehra was tied in the front room, with his sisters and aunts around him and one of them pinning the kalgi at the front. It is a headdress of beaded strands that hang down over the face, worn over a grey suit here because the ceremony was in a church.

Sweets were offered, garlands went on, and the family walked him out to the car with the strands across his eyes so he could barely see the step.

A coconut went under the tyre. The men pushed the car, it went over, it cracked, everyone cheered, and they were gone. Four seconds.

The church

A Catholic church in London, brick and stone with a rose window and a bell tower, and the street outside full of guests in saris.

The sehra came off at the door. Inside, a white lace gown, henna still on her hands, and a church full enough that people were standing at the back.

Confetti in the doorway, a white Rolls Royce at the kerb, and the first ten minutes of the day where the two of them were on their own.

The change

She came back in red and gold, with the dupatta over her head, a nath and a maang tikka. He came back in a cream sherwani. Varmala garlands for both of them. This is the same couple you have just watched get married in a church, an hour later.

The reception

A dhol drummer at the door, loud enough to be felt through the floor.

Then the stage, with gold thrones and blue and gold drapes, and family coming up in groups for an hour and a half. Grandmothers, cousins, babies handed across laps.

Then the floor, and it did not stop. Chooda bangles, three hundred people, and the kind of dancing that makes a photographer put the flash away and raise the ISO instead.

The vidaai

And then the leaving, which is the part nobody warns you about.

If you are planning something like this

There is more about how these days run, and where the timeline usually goes wrong, on my Asian wedding photography page. I am in Stevenage and I work across Hertfordshire, London and abroad. Send me your dates.