5 Photographers And Videographers On Their Journey To Capturing The Big Fat Indian Wedding

Lights, camera, “I do!” Gone are the days when wedding albums were little more than a blur of stiff poses and glittery props. Today’s couples are saying goodbye to cheesy clichés and hello to imagery that feels personal. As the big fat Indian wedding evolves into a more intimate and reflective celebration, so does the lens that captures it. Modern-day couples aren’t just looking for snapshots; they’re after visual time capsules, and carefully curated collections of memories that echo the emotions, traditions, and unique quirks of their journey together.

From stealing moments of the groom’s nervous laughter to choreographing drone shots that could rival Bollywood’s finest, these five storytellers are redefining how we remember “the day.” Meet the creative minds turning wedding albums into works of art — proof that when it comes to love stories, the picture is worth a thousand words (and maybe a million views).

5 Wedding Photographers And Videographers On Taking The Perfect Shot

Badal Raja Company

In 1999, journalist Badal Jain was commissioned to shoot Mandira Bedi’s wedding as a cinematographer. But he bagged his first formal project in 2020. Meher Sarid — a close

friend and India’s foremost wedding planner — introduced him to producer Ponty Chaddha, who let Jain document his son’s wedding in true cinéma vérité tradition. Calling himself a “memory keeper”, Jain spends his time at weddings filming uncles reading newspapers, and cousins stealing an extra gol gappa and cross-cutting them with vox pop-esque bytes from grandparents.

“Wedding films and photos are an opportunity to showcase a couple’s lifespan — who, where, and why they are. These common threads are something that I want to decode during the razzmatazz of a wedding,”  he says. His favourite wedding picture: “A black and white photograph from my parent’s wedding. I have a very high regard for the purity of that picture. It is an honest and nonchalant image of my parents who were just busy getting married.”

Sam & Ekta

Sam Walzade and Ekta Rekhi had set out to master street photography as part of their extensive travels across the globe. A chance series of photographs captured at a friend’s wedding found the couple responding to people’s requests to document their weddings. Describing their style as “simple and nimble”, the duo keep their documentation process as unobtrusive as possible.

With a penchant for Leica lenses and SL2S cameras, they have experimented with a range of styles, including analogue photography at Sonakshi Sinha’s wedding to Zaheer Iqbal.

“We prioritise the moment over the gear, and never go into a wedding with an equipment-forward point of view,” shares Walzade. An image close to their heart: “There are some photographs where you feel that there is something larger at work in the universe. One of Mr Anil Ambani where his expressive laughter echoes with that of his father’s photograph right behind him is an example,” says Walzade.

Naman Verma

“The power of photography to document emotions, and convey the cultural essence of people made me want to pursue it professionally,” says Naman Verma. He decided to take up wedding photography for its ability to capture human connections and cultural rituals. He loves shooting in natural light with 24mm,35mm and 50mm lenses and frames his subjects against backgrounds that lend narrative depth to their stories. 

“I want viewers to feel the intimacy of the couple’s connection and sense the quiet history in the architecture around them, or the vibrancy of a landscape that’s part of their heritage.” A stand-out wedding memory: “It was a wedding that happened on a boat in Kumarakom, Kerala. Kathakali dancers in costumes performed alongside local artists, and the bride and groom had separate baraats. This wedding merged personal and cultural elements, painting an unforgettable tapestry of Kerala’s heritage.”

The Wedding Story

As an army kid, Harpreet Bachher was removed from the mad-cap world of weddings.

Having worked as a lifestyle and fashion photographer for years, he shot his first wedding when a model friend decided to get married. With a video camera by his side, Bachher made a wedding film, a moving story around the couple’s cross-cultural romance, that led to The Wedding Story.

He was the first Indian to dabble in drone photography at the Atlantis, Dubai and describes his visual language as being rooted in social and emotional resonance. From filming interfaith and intercultural marriages to calming run-away brides hours before the ceremony — Bachher has done it all. Greatest compliment: “Six years ago a bride called me and said she had decided to not walk out of her marriage after revisiting her wedding film. That compliment was better than all the money that I have got,” says Bachher.

The Cheesecake Project

Stuti Sakhalkar was a young graduate when she photographed her friend’s sister’s wedding, focusing on anything that caught her eye. When the images hit Facebook, “Everyone went, “can you do this for us?” That’s how I kept documenting weddings from my perspective.” Which led to The Cheesecake Project.“I have no justification for the name. Except I tasted a cheesecake for the first time and decided, yes this was love,” laughs Sakhalkar. Her social media reveals the range of her work, from the sundrenched beauty of Tamil nuptials to the saturated tones of Bengali weddings.

What keeps her going: “The third wedding I photographed was for a friend in Bhubaneshwar. The morning after, the bride’s father handed me an envelope and with tears said, ‘Beta, these aren’t for the pictures, these are our blessings for you’. This has stayed with me since, making me so grateful for what I do”.

This has been adapted for the web from an article published in Manifest’s December 2024-January 2025 issue that is now on stands. For more stories like this, subscribe here!