Fusion wedding photography in Chennai

A fusion wedding brings two families with different ceremonies, different customs, sometimes different languages and sometimes different countries, into one wedding. We've shot North Indian and South Indian combinations, Tamil and Telugu, Tamil and French, and a few that didn't fit into any of those categories. It's usually a love marriage, which tends to make the whole thing warmer than most weddings we shoot, and it's often a destination wedding, since the couple is coming from two different places to begin with.

Rohan is North Indian himself, and between the two of us we've spent thirteen years photographing South Indian weddings in and around Chennai. That's one combination we know from both sides. But the real reason fusion weddings work for us isn't that specific pairing, it's that we've covered enough different combinations to know the same thing holds true every time: whichever tradition is less familiar to a photographer is the one that gets shot like a guest instead of family.

Why it's harder than it looks

Two different sets of rituals, sometimes two priests or a priest and someone from a different faith entirely, sometimes two full days, one for each side. If a photographer only knows one of the two traditions well, it shows in the gallery. The familiar half gets shot with confidence, the unfamiliar half gets shot cautiously, and the difference is visible even if nobody can quite say why.

We plan for both sides properly, whichever two traditions are involved, so neither family ends up with a thinner set of photographs than the other.

What we've noticed

These weddings tend to bring out real curiosity between the families, in-laws watching a ceremony they've never seen before, and it usually turns into warmth rather than awkwardness. Combined with it being a love marriage more often than not, the emotion running through a fusion wedding is some of the best we get to photograph.

How we cover it

Two ceremonies means twice the planning, not twice the crew standing around confused. We work out in advance which events happen when, whose turn it is for which ritual, and where the traditional photographs need to happen for each side.

One wedding a day, never two. Both of us lead every wedding and shoot alongside our own team.

Some of the Fusion weddings we've photographed