Sikh Wedding Photographer in Rickmansworth

Serving Rickmansworth

Getting married at the gurdwara in Rickmansworth?

Rickmansworth is a Three Rivers town. From darbar halls to hotel ballrooms to marquees raised on private grounds, we photograph Sikh weddings throughout Hertfordshire, Chorleywood, Croxley Green and Northwood included. Palla in hand, you rise for the first laav, and we photograph the moment of standing rather than only the walking, because the hesitation before that first circuit is entirely human.

Prayer is not a photo opportunity. When the ardas is offered we stand with the congregation, hands still, and take at most one frame from where we already are. Sequence knowledge is what separates a calm morning from a frantic one. The sikhia comes before the laavan and the hukamnama after, and being certain of that order keeps us framed rather than reacting. Sightlines are respected throughout, so the family seated in the darbar hall always see the ceremony past our shoulders, never around us.

We could find our way around Rickmansworth without a map. Rickmansworth is a Three Rivers town, and the venues in Mill End and Croxley Green nearby are just as familiar to us. Venues we know well in and near Rickmansworth include Moor Park Golf Club, Micklefield Hall and The Waterside Venue.

Rickmansworth is a Three Rivers town in Hertfordshire, set where the rivers Chess, Gade and Colne meet north west of London. Rickmansworth station is an interchange served by the London Underground Metropolitan line and Chiltern Railways. For pre-wedding and couple portraits, we love spots such as Rickmansworth Aquadrome, with Batchworth and Bury Lakes, open grassland and woodland walks, with The Aquadrome, a lakeside park and nature reserve with lakes formed from gravel pits once dug to build the original Wembley Stadium close by for a striking backdrop.

Every Sikh ritual

Each laav sung by the ragis, remembered

We never use intrusive flash inside the darbar hall, working instead with the natural light on the canopy, the rumalla and the golden colour of the morning. Ardas brings the whole sangat to its feet, and we take a single wide frame from where we already stand, otherwise still, because prayer is not something to be worked around. Bowing before the Guru Granth Sahib on arrival, the matha tek, is often a family's first act of the morning, and we photograph it from the side, never from in front of the Guru.

Cake cutting, first dance and the last song are covered without fuss, but we keep half an eye on the edges of the room, where the cousins and the grandparents are quietly holding court. The gana, the red thread tied at the wrist before the wedding, is a small ritual we always make sure to photograph, because the details carry the story as much as the big moments. The jago is unlike anything else, and we photograph the decorated pot carried on the head, the sticks banging on doors and the aunties dancing the night loud and late.