Sikh Wedding Photographer in Chelmsford

Serving Chelmsford

Planning an Anand Karaj in Chelmsford?

Chelmsford is the county city of Essex with riverside and country venues. The hotels, marquee sites and banqueting suites that Sikh families in Essex favour for the reception are places we return to often, and the same goes for the venues clustered around Springfield, Galleywood and Writtle. We photograph the milni pairings formally for the families and candidly for the album, so both the tradition and the teasing are kept.

Reading the room is half the craft; we watch for the grandmother wiping an eye during the laavan and the cousins laughing at the milni, and we let both happen. Emotion tends to arrive slightly off-centre, in the row behind you or at the edge of the frame, so we watch the families as much as the couple through the four laavan. Asking comes before shooting. On arrival we find the sewadars or the granthi, check where photography is welcome and where it is not, and then work strictly inside that answer.

We have covered enough weddings in Chelmsford to know it properly. Chelmsford is the county city of Essex with riverside and country venues, and the surrounding towns of Basildon and Harlow appear in our diary just as often. We are at home at Chelmsford-area venues such as Hylands House, Leez Priory and Channels Estate.

Chelmsford is the county city of Essex with riverside and country venues, gaining city status in 2012 and sitting where the rivers Chelmer and Can meet. Chelmsford station is on the Great Eastern Main Line with Greater Anglia services to London Liverpool Street. For pre-wedding and couple portraits, we love spots such as Hylands Park, a large historic estate of parkland and gardens around the neo-classical Hylands House, with Chelmsford Cathedral, dedicated to St Mary the Virgin, St Peter and St Cedd close by for a striking backdrop.

Check your date

Every Sikh ritual

The quiet rituals as well as the loud ones

Waving the chaur sahib over the Guru Granth Sahib is a service performed throughout, and we photograph that quiet sewa too, because the darbar hall is never only about the couple. Inside the darbar hall we work with our heads covered and our movements slow, positioned discreetly to one side so the ceremony before the Guru Granth Sahib is never disturbed. Kirtan by the ragis fills the hall long before you enter it, and we arrive in time to photograph the musicians settling, the harmonium opening and the sangat gathering in ones and twos.

Bhangra takes over the reception floor, and we photograph the shoulders, the spins and the whole room moving together as the dhol and the DJ trade the night between them. The mehndi evening moves at its own gentle pace, and we photograph the trays of sweets, the green and gold of the outfits and the anticipation building through the songs. Front-room evenings before the wedding, with an old dholki, a plate of sweets and songs learned from grandmothers, produce warmer pictures than any hired stage ever manages.