The Merion Wedding | Shelley and Rikhil

One of the many things I love about documenting weddings is learning about different cultures and religions and the way each goes about celebrating a marriage. Shelley and Rikhil’s Merion Wedding provided us the opportunity to not only document their beautiful Hindu wedding but also three days of events leading up to the wedding day!

The celebration kicked off Wednesday evening with Rik’s Mehndi party. Lot’s of family and friends were on hand to have the artist paint the intricate henna designs on their hands or just hang out and enjoy conversation and food. It was a wonderful atmosphere and provided me with some insight to Rik’s immediate and extended family. They are a fun, warm and loving family and I soon found out the same with Shelley’s family the following day.
Thursday morning was Shelley’s Mehndi party and just like Rik’s, I had a lot of fun documenting the artist while she worked and I also had the chance to enjoy some conversation with Shelley’s family and get to know them a bit. After I left Shelley’s Mehndi party, I went right over to Rik’s Pithi ceremony. I wasn’t familiar with the Pithi ceremony so of course I looked it up. I discovered that it is a celebration of love and happiness for one who is being married. It is so arranged that all relatives come and prepare for the ceremony. Pithi ceremony indicates that now the girl or boy has entered into adulthood and is ready for the marriage.
Pithi is a flour based paste and part of the ceremony consists of family members rubbing the paste on the bride or grooms face, hands and legs. That part of the ceremony was so much fun to document, I was laughing so hard that it was tough to work the camera at times!
The following morning we had Shelley’s Pithi ceremony followed that evening with the final pre-wedding event, Garba night! Garba is a form of dance that originated in India and is a series of steps that include spinning, some hand-clapping and sweeping of the arms. All I know is that it looked fun and everyone was having a great time doing it!

Finally the wedding day had arrived! Shelley and Rik looked absolutely stunning together and their celebration at The Merion was an epic day for the Bride, Groom, their family and friends. I’d like to give a shout out to Dan Inzitari at Inzi Wedding Films who was a pleasure to work with and I want to thank the Patel and Monteiro families for welcoming me into their homes and making us feel like family. Congrats to Shelley and Rik!!

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