Seattle Wedding Photographers Blog of Candid Wedding Photography

I have been photographing weddings professionally since 1997 and have seen hundreds of weddings in that time. Traditional American weddings are great to photograph and I have seen them evolve over the years as people see fit to define how they want to arrange their wedding. Some strictly follow tradition and many feel free to improvise. There is something very special about traditional Indian weddings.  No other culture has such elaborate rituals and ceremonies lasting days and such festive garments all of which make photographing them a radical departure from American weddings.   In October I had the pleasure along with Monica Frisell to photograph the wedding of  Namita Singh and Gauhar Junnarkar. Their wedding was a traditional Indian Hindu wedding with three days of festivities starting on Thursday with the Mehndi ceremony, one of the most important pre-wedding rituals especially for the bride. It was a fun and festive ritual, at Namita’s home with family and friends with the women wearing vivid colors. There was a a professional henna artist applying the mehndi to Namita and some of the other women as well. The designs are fascinating and the really good henna artists hide the name of the groom in the intricacies of the design.

Friday night the celebration of  Namita and Gauhar’s wedding continued at the Bainbridge Island Community Center with more dancing and feasting.

Finally on Saturday, October 8th they had a  Hindu wedding ceremony at  The Golf Club at Newcastle. The weather was splendid and the light was grand. The Golf Club has a great white tent where the wedding ceremony took place and it was amazingly decorated with numerous flowers.

Before people began to arrive, Namita and Gauhar  and I went around the grounds and made some pictures with the beautiful scenery in the  background. The views from Newcastle are wonderful if the weather is clear and it was slightly hazy, but still very nice that day. In the traditional Indian manner, Gauhar mounted a horse ( if an elephant is not available) and with members of his family traveled around the grounds of Newcastle accompanied by music and drumming and dancing.  They finally arrived at the entrance of the Clubhouse and were formally greeted by Namita’s family. Then they all proceed to enter the tent for the ceremony.  Gauhar and the priests Mr Dilip Bhatt and Pandit Mahesh Shastriji entered along with almost everyone except the bride. The Hindu ceremony was performed according to Vedic traditions in the Sanskrit language. It was a relatively long ceremony made up of 16 different rituals. After the Hindu ceremony there was a cocktail hour on the terrace and then a formal dinner inside the main ballroom.

Here are some of the highlights of their wedding festivities beginning with the Mehndi and on through the end of the festivities on Saturday night.

Here is a link to Namita and Gauhar’s  previous post of their The Golf Club at Newcastle Wedding. I would like to give a shout out to videographer Aaron Horton of  Aaron Horton Productions who was a pleasure to work with. A real professional to work with. Would like to see his film with it is done. Finally hats offf to Erik Franklin and his staff at The Golf Club at Newcastle. They operate a really first class venue. One of the finest.

Below is a mini-slide show with a larger selection of wedding pictures from Namita and Gauhar’s wedding . Click on “toggle images” at top right to hide the thumbnails; to start just click on the right arrow on the image.

The Golf Club at Newcastle was beautiful setting for Namita and Gauhar’s hindu wedding ceremony last Saturday. We took time before the ceremony to make some pictures on the scenic grounds around the golf course. Here a few of the highlights of their wedding I selected as I was backing up all of the images to my hard drive. It will take some time to go through all the pictures from all of the ceremonies, including the days of festivities leading up to Saturday, and edit them down to a manageable number. Here’s hoping these will hold you all until then.

Saturday August 14th arrived and Surbhi and Ganesh came to the The Mayflower Renaissance Washington, DC Hotel, just down Connecticut Avenue from the White House. Built in 1925, the Mayflower Hotel, is an architectural and social landmark in Washington, favored by many U.S. Presidents including Calvin Coolidge, Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman who lived there for the first 90 days of his presidential term.
Surbhi got her hair done in Virginia before heading to the hotel to get ready. Ganesh lucked out and got to move into the Presidential suite to get ready with his groomsmen.

As Surbhi continued getting ready, Ganesh and his family began the Barath or grand arrival ceremony. A pedicab had been lavishly decorated for the occasion taking the place of a more pedestrian white horse or elephant. Ganesh processed around the block preceded by durmmers and many dancers until arriving at the hotel entrance and being greeted by Surbhi’s family and the pundits or priests.

After the Barath ceremony, the main set of formal wedding ceremonies began with both sets of parents and the groom participating to start, and then the Surbhi arrived for the final set of ceremonies.

At the end of the night a Surbhi and Ganesh headed for their suite, a couple of Ganesh’s aunties tipped me off that their suite had been decorated for the wedding couple and I managed to get some photos of the bed before they entered the room.

Below is a mini-slide show with these and some more highlights from Ganesh and Surbhi’s Wedding Ceremony and Reception Pictures, check it out. Click on “Pictures” at top right to hide the thumbnails; to start just click on the right arrow on the image.

Seattle photographer Daniel Sheehan, specializes in photojournalism and portrait photography for publications and corporations and is a Seattle wedding photographer who travels internationally to photograph weddings.

Members of Ganesh’s extended family converged on the grounds of the Washington Monument for a family picture with the Lincoln Memorial in the background.

It has taken me a while to complete the editing of an usually large number of pictures I made over four days in Washington, DC photographing Ganesh and Surbhi‘s Indian wedding. They had a traditional Hindu ceremony at the Mayflower Hotel on Saturday but in the couple of days days leading up it there were the traditional Haldi and Mehendi ceremonies. Ganesh and Surbhi are about the nicest couple of people I have had the privilege to photograph in a long time. Some years back I had met Ganesh when I traveled to Bangalore to photograph his cousin’s  Eshwar wedding to Nafisa. So when I arrived in Washington and caught up with the family it was like old home week.
Because of the length of the ceremonies over 3 days I have decided to split the coverage into two blog entries and here are the highlights from the first few days the families were in Washington DC for the festive occasion. I will post some of them and at the bottom is a slide show with a longer set of images.

Below is a mini-slide show with these and some more highlights from Ganesh and Surbhi’s Haldi and Menhendi Ceremonies, check it out. Click on “Pictures” at top right to hide the thumbnails; to start just click on the right arrow on the image.

Seattle photographer Daniel Sheehan, specializes in photojournalism and portrait photography for publications and corporations and is a Seattle wedding photographer.

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Shameer and Bindu at the Seattle Art Museum Olympic Sculpture Garden before the reception above and below.

Shameerpaul Sangha and Bindu Dulai were married in a traditional Sikh wedding ceremony in Houston, Texas and a week later on June 26th had a wedding reception celebration in Seattle at the Great Hall of Union Station for all of their family and friends in the Seattle area.

What a wonderful celebration it was with great Indian food and fabulous dancing. I was sorry the traditional Sikh wedding ceremony was so far away and could not photograph it but the wedding reception was so much fun I had a blast making pictures and watching the fun everyone was having. Shameer and Bindu were moved by the welcome and danced for much of the evening. Here are some selected highlights of the evening. Below is a mini gallery of 40 images for the reception. To see the web gallery with all of the pictures of the wedding celebration reception click on this link: Sikh Wedding Reception of Shameer and Bindu

The Great Hall at Union Station is a national landmark noted for being an architectural masterpiece. Also noted for it’s spectacular black and white mosaic floor and over 460 white lights glittering from it’s 55 foot barrel-vaulted ceiling, The Great Hall’s grand ambiance is unique and if you are having more than 300 people to a reception, it is one of your best choices for a venue. It can hold up to 500. Built in 1911 and restored in 1999, the stunning interior is dominated by a central barrel-vaulted ceiling, antique tile floors and classical pilasters accented by a series of archways. The Great Hall at Union Station has been completely restored to recreate its original historic charm.

Catering was provided by Jewel Hospitality

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Below is a mini-gallery with some more of my favorite images from their wedding reception celebration.

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Daniel Sheehan, specializes in photojournalism and portrait photography for publications and corporations and is a wedding photographer.