Sikh Wedding Photographer in Walsall

Serving Walsall

Twenty five years of Sikh weddings, now in Walsall

Walsall is a Black Country town with a strong Sikh and Hindu community. We spend much of the year inside gurdwaras and banqueting venues, so the sites near Bloxwich, Willenhall and Darlaston are ones we can read quickly. Mothers cry at different moments, and after enough anand karaj mornings we have learned it is usually during the second laav rather than the fourth, so that is where our second angle looks.

Movement in the darbar hall is kept slow and predictable, so neither the granthi nor your elders are ever startled by a photographer darting past. Family groups run to a written list handed to us in advance, with one relative nominated to fetch people, so the whole set is finished in fifteen minutes and everybody gets to langar. Out with the baraat we walk backwards more than forwards, framing the groom through the dancing rather than over it, and we keep well clear of the drummers' arcs while doing it.

Sikh families in Walsall often hold the Anand Karaj locally and the reception a short drive away. Walsall is a Black Country town with a strong Sikh and Hindu community, and we plan both halves of that journey carefully. Venues we cover in and near Walsall include Memoirs Banqueting and The Willows Hall.

Walsall is a Black Country market town with a long history of leather goods manufacturing and strong Sikh and Hindu communities. Walsall railway station connects to Birmingham and Rugeley, with the M6 running through the borough near junctions 9 and 10. For relaxed couple photographs, we like Walsall Arboretum, a Victorian park close to the town centre, and The New Art Gallery Walsall beside the canal basin gives the day a strong sense of Walsall.

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Every Sikh ritual

The Anand Karaj, from ardas to karah parshad

Photographing the sangat matters as much as photographing you, because an anand karaj is a public act before the Guru and the congregation, and an album that omits them tells half of it. The milni outside the gurdwara is where the two families formally meet, and we photograph the garlands, the embraces and the gentle laughter as each pairing steps forward in turn. 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.

Jago processions leave the house and take over the street, and we work with the movement, photographing the gagar of lights held high and the boliyan traded back and forth. Kurmai brings the two families formally together with the ring, the sagan and the exchange of sweets, and covering it means your wedding album can begin where the story actually began. During the choora ceremony we photograph the red and ivory bangles being slipped on by your maternal uncle, the blessings of the family and the tears that usually arrive with them.