Yasmin & Tyseer: Wedding | Raleigh Wedding Photography

So, as promised, here are Yasmin and Tyseer's wedding pictures! As I said in the mehndi post, it was such a joy for me to be involved in this wedding as I was - my family was invited anyway, as guests, but I had the honor and pleasure of capturing it as photographer. I also met Tyseer and his family before this wedding; Tyseer's wonderful mother got in touch with me after she met me at the wedding of her best friend's daughter, Sanjana, which I photographed last year.

So amidst the friends I grew up with - Yasmin is part of the generation a few years younger than me who are going through the "wedding phase" now - it was honestly one of the best times I've had photographing a wedding. I was especially excited because Yasmin is one of those AWESOME brides who actually schedules enough time to allow for more creative bridal portraits; I also enjoyed being able to photograph two different bridal gowns, as Yasmin - with her mixed heritage of Syrian and Pakistani - donned both a white wedding gown with hijab and a traditional Pakistani lehnga (though in a unique dark blue and red combination!) during the course of the evening.

Yasmin's shaadi, or wedding celebration, was held at the beautiful, classy Brier Creek Country Club in Raleigh, so we got to take advantage of a sweet little courtyard designed for weddings and portraits, as well as the gently rolling golf course right next door. We had been worried that the sun might be too glaring for our late afternoon portraits, and then that it might rain, but we ended up with the softest, cloud-filtered, golden sunset light one could imagine. After portraits, everything took place indoors, and the families had a series of wedding traditions and rituals - a shared drink, a cake-cutting, the traditional desi shoe-stealing (which ended up in Yasmin's shoes being stolen, too - very untraditional! - some Punjabi dancing from the men, and the bride's friends blocking the couple's way out at the end for payment from the groom's brother and friends (that shot at the bottom with the ladies lined up in front of the door? Yeah... that's not a pose :) )

Also, I could not have done this without my amazing second shooter, Sara Haddad, with whom I've shot two weddings before this. Sara took a few of the shots you see below, including the AWESOME capture of Tyseer dancing. She captured some great moments from angles and places where I couldn't be, and definitely made this wedding story complete.