Sikh Wedding Photographer in Sarratt

Serving Sarratt

A Sikh wedding photographer who knows Sarratt

Sarratt is a pretty Chilterns village with a historic green. Across Hertfordshire we photograph Sikh weddings in gurdwaras, banqueting halls, hotels and marquees, and the venues around Chorleywood, Chipperfield and Rickmansworth are well known to us. We photograph the ardas from the back of the hall, the whole sangat standing together, a wide and reverent frame that shows the community gathered around your marriage.

Barefoot and low is how we spend the anand karaj, often seated with the sangat at floor level, so our eyeline matches yours and the pictures feel like the ceremony rather than a report on it. We pace ourselves deliberately across a long day, so the eye behind the camera is as sharp at the doli as it was at the maiyan. 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.

When couples choose Sarratt, we know exactly what the day will ask of us. Sarratt is a pretty Chilterns village with a historic green, and we work its surroundings, Knebworth and Welwyn, just as often. Local wedding venues we know near Sarratt include Micklefield Hall and The Grove.

Sarratt is a pretty Chilterns village in the Three Rivers district, clustered along a long narrow historic green about four miles north of Rickmansworth. Sarratt is served by nearby Chorleywood and Rickmansworth stations on the Metropolitan line, and lies close to junction 18 of the M25. For relaxed couple photographs, we like The Chess Valley and Sarratt Bottom, a chalk stream landscape in the Chilterns Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, and The Church of the Holy Cross, a flint and brick church founded around 1190 gives the day a strong sense of Sarratt.

Every Sikh ritual

Every Sikh ceremony in Sarratt, captured with care

During the ardas we lower the cameras to almost nothing, holding one or two respectful frames of the standing congregation with hands folded as the prayer is offered. Rumalla covering the Guru Granth Sahib, the flowers around the palki sahib, the canopy overhead; these frames set the scene in an album and are taken before the hall fills. Working in gurdwaras across Hertfordshire has taught us where the light falls in each darbar hall, so the laavan are photographed beautifully without a single flash being fired.

The night before the wedding often turns into an informal sangeet, and we photograph the family dances, the singing and the generations packed into one loud and happy room. We photograph the speeches at the reception for the reactions as much as the words, the laughter down the tables and the pride on your parents' faces as your friends speak. Doli endings ask for restraint rather than technique. We hold back, use a long lens, and let the family close around the car without a photographer pressing into the middle of the goodbye.