Last year’s event was an enormous success for us, and we were happy to find ourselves in a company of select upscale vendors from all over New York. As tough as the local competition gets we are excited to see what other wedding photographers and videographers have been up to, may be even have a chance to talk shop for a minute.. discuss the current state of affairs with regards to local wedding photography, destination weddings, or the Giants..

This year we are building a beautiful booth adorned with some of our favorite images from 2011 weddings and engagements, and we will be giving away something very special – come to our booth and mention that you read our blog, and a lovely gift awaits you!

You can find out more about the upcoming bridal event here on Wedding Library’s blog http://weddinglibrarybuzz.blogspot.com/, and if you would like to come to the event as our guests we will be happy to provide a pair of complimentary tickets for you.

During the traditional henna ceremony a mehndiwali applies mehndi on the hands and feet of the bride. The event is very joyous and festive with the women singing traditional songs. The bride normally wears a yellow or green dress for the Henna celebration and uses only light, or mostly, no make-up. The groom will typically wear a casual Shalwar Qameez. The bride and/or the groom are brought forward in the ceremony under a decorative dupatta by their close relatives. In the bridal ceremony, a certain number of married women who are closely related to the bride apply henna to her hands, and feed her sweets. This ritual is supposed to bring good luck and longevity to the bride’s married life. Similarly, on the groom’s side, oil is applied to his head and sweets are fed to the groom.

Over the years of photographing weddings and traveling the world we understood that traditional Muslim weddings are probably the most important events in the life of a given community, with every friend and distant relative attending, wearing splendid costumes that are often adorned with gold and silver jewelry, and elaborate Islamic religious rituals that are followed.

These families are prominent members of Miami’s Indian Muslim community, and they were set on making sure that all the traditions are to be followed to the letter. The next posts will be about the other two days of this elaborate and beautiful wedding marathon: The Nikaah and Valimah.

Perhaps the biggest challenge of maternity and prenatal photography is composition. The fact is that women do not generally feel very sexy when they are pregnant, so the biggest challenge for a maternity photographer is to make her feel beautiful and comfortable, so that you can go on and concentrate on finding the best possible angles, light, and poses that will compliment your given subject. Also, we tried to simplify the surroundings, so that the beautiful belly is the main focus of the session.

We strongly believe that in maternity photo sessions props are essential: sarongs, scarves, colorful blankets, beautiful bedding sets, duvet covers, and such. If siblings are available than they could be included – in this case the shoot was built around the interaction between the clients’ son and mom’s wonderful belly. We strived to highlight the relationships in this photo session, between mother and son, father and son, mom and dad, and their chemistry turned out to be warm, sentimental, funny, and most importantly full of love and tenderness.

See more images from their extravagant wedding here http://luxphotostudios.com/2011/12/wedding-in-uzbekistan/, and their pre-wedding romantic photo session in Tashkent (pink dress hotness!) http://luxphotostudios.com/2011/11/romantic-photo-session-in-tashkent/, as well as their engagement photo shoot in Vizcaya Gardens in Miami http://luxphotostudios.com/2011/05/vizcaya-gardens-engagement-in-miami/

The bride and groom started to get ready at the Radisson Blu Hotel Tashkent, the same place where the event took place. Very nice wedding venue, built to Western standards, yet brandishing some local Central Asian motifs, colors , and materials.

Did we mention before that we love long veils? Well, we do! There are so many things that one can do with it with respect to photography. We haven’t had much time shooting these so we improvised on the spot, and with the help of bridesmaid churned out these beauties. The dress and the veil were designed by Vera Wang for her 2011 bridal collection, and the shoes are by Badgley Mischka.

A few nervous moments in anticipation, just before the bride and the groom were set to enter the main balroom, they were interviewed for a local newspaper right on the staircase, and we were right there to snap a few anxious shots.

After all the guests walked in the main balroom and were placed at their seats, the traditional uzbek fanfares started up, at which point the groom made an entrance, walked over across the room to the center stage, a place where the bride and groom with their witnesses are to be seated – a lovely table set up on a podium at the head of the balroom. The fanfares subsided, the spotlight switched from the groom to the bride led in by her father, in silence, unsmiling, tense and emotional.

After a heartfelt exchange of hugs and kisses between the bride and her Uzbek family and the groom and his Belarusian family, all to the sound of cheering crowd, the newlyweds ventured into their first dance.

We saw the bride and groom practice this dance before on few occasions, and this being a very difficult wedding dance, they have done a marvelous job performing. Their dance started off the party.

At Uzbek weddings the tradition is to have performers to entertain the guests. Our couple hired a dozen of different entertainment acts: singers, dancers, musicians.. All were fantastic in their own right.

One of the performers was a famous Soviet era singer, Tashkent’s native Faruh Zakirov, a lead singer of a band Yalla, the most famous singing act to come out of Uzbekistan.

The cake was simply delicious but a few guests actually were able to taste it since the food throughout the wedding was just outstanding, cooked in the best Uzbek traditions. Following American traditions the bridal bouquet was tossed, a little far the first time, but perfectly on the second try, making an arch and landing in the midst of eager single ladies. The bouquet along with all the other flower arrangements was created by the talented designer-florist Ruben Saakyan, who is based in Tashkent but travels worldwide for all sorts of upscale floral assignments.

The bride’s pre-wedding dress was custom designed for her by a close friend Uzbek designer Elena Milberger, a talented local couturier. We loved the design, the contour, the colors, brave and tender at the same time, light and soft material. So naturally, we made this shoot all about the dress..

We already had a pleasure to photograph this couple at the stately Vizcaya Garden back in Miami, FL during their engagement photo session http://luxphotostudios.com/2011/05/vizcaya-gardens-engagement-in-miami/ The groom is from Belarus and the bride is native Uzbek, together they look like they stepped out from the pages of a designers’ catalogue, so photographing them was a breeze!

With a hundred plus guests who flocked in from Montreal it turned out to be one of the most stylish and voguish events of the year, with a stunning bride, great ambiance, wonderful Jewish marriage ceremony peppered with traditional Jewish Moroccan wedding customs, and deep and heartfelt words of wisdom by the rabbi. Afterwards the party rocked on to the tunes of DJ Yo C whom the bride and groom brought in from Montreal. It was a really unforgettable night in NY.

A Vietnamese bride from the Bronx, a Vietnamese-Italian groom from New Jersey, a wedding in Queens – it it New York in all its multicultural, wonderfully-ethnic glory. The day started bright and early at bride’s parents house in the Bronx. Massimo, the groom, arrived with his closest friends and family carrying gifts to ask permission to “receive” the bride. The procession of the groom’s family was led in specific order. The first person would be the representative of the groom’s house followed by the groom’s father, the groom, then the rest of his family and close friends. They were met out on the street in front of the house by bride’s sisters. Once everyone settled in the living room of the house Jasmine, the bride, led by her father walked in, wearing traditional Vietnamese wedding dress.

A Vietnamese Tea Ceremony followed. The bride and groom, in front of all their guests, served tea to their parents and relatives. Each parent gave advice about marriage and family to the couple. A candle ceremony followed, symbolizing the joining of the bride and groom and the joining of the two families. The groom’s gift boxes filled with jewelry were opened by the bride’s mother, who then put each piece on the bride for good fortune.

The bride, Jasmine, changed from her red Áo dài into a very elegant white wedding dress, with the help of her two younger sisters. Jasmine turned out to be absolutely stress-free bride, very wise, calm and composed, her lovely good-humored sisters by her side, and always ready with a helping hand.

The layout for this blog post is our traditional crisp and clean album layout, something that most of our clients want when ordering an album. You can view more of our wedding album design and layouts here: http://luxphotostudios.com/category/albums/. To see our current wedding photo book collection see our album pages on the main website: http://luxphotos.com/category/riviera-album/

The wedding reception continued at the Sheraton LaGuardia East Hotel in Queens. One of the things we loved about this wedding venue was the large outdoor garden, perfect for family portraits and bridal portraits. Inside the balroom everything turned out to be traditionally-styled, in good taste and sparkling clean.

Looking back there is one thing that we wanted to do at this wedding but just could not accomplish because of time constraints – a vogue magazine-like photograph of the family sitting at this long and picturesque dinner table, all facing the camera, almost like the Last Supper but definitely more Vogue. That would have been spectacular!

The DJs from DJNYC deserve a special mention as they put on great show that evening – the wedding party kept on rocking till late night, dancing, jumping, drinking, partying, doing conga lines, breakdancing.. you name it!

A quiet moment with bride and groom alone – the newlyweds ran away from the guests for a few brief moments to catch a breath from all the wild dancing and electrified wedding celebration. Anticipating a nice photo opp we followed and this is what came out.

For those of you who follow our blog you will probably recognize that this is the same couple form the lovely and refreshing engagement photo session we did at the South Street Seaport sometime in the spring.