Our company now photographs about 60% multicultural weddings, but at the time this image was taken, that wasn’t yet the case. We were just beginning to lean into the idea of this being our niche and loving the focus on multicultural and heritage-centered events. This couple was celebrating a blended cultural wedding, with the bride coming from a more traditional Western wedding background and the groom being Arab-American. Their celebration turned into a beautiful three-day event with multiple ceremonies, each one designed to honor their individual heritages, faith traditions, and friend groups.
Culturally focused weddings are incredibly fun for so many reasons. The biggest one, I think, is how they keep things fresh. As creatives, we balance the business side of what we do with the need to approach each weekend with new eyes and inspiration. For our couples, this is the most meaningful celebration of their lives, and the idea that it could ever feel like just another workday to us feels somewhat tragic to me, but if you’ve been in the industry for more than a minute, you know it’s a real possibility.
That’s something we actively fight against as a team. We pour so much of ourselves into these weddings, and culturally focused celebrations make that easy because every single one is different. Even when two weddings come from the same culture, there are always subtle nuances based on the family’s background or the couple’s personal story.
One of my favorite things about Arab weddings, in particular, is the fashion. The dresses are almost always custom-designed, and they look like they belong in a royal wedding, hence the title for this image. The bride hadn’t grown up with this tradition, so she was blown away by the gown that was being created for her. She took several trips to Miami for fittings, and all day she kept saying she felt like royalty.
This image was taken just after their first look. They had shared an emotional moment seeing each other for the first time, and we had only a short window to capture a few portraits. The biggest challenge was giving the couple the emotional space they needed, since not everyone around them understood how important that was. My team created a small boundary so they could simply breathe and be together before the whirlwind continued.
This image received the most attention, but interestingly, it isn’t my personal favorite from their wedding. There were others that captured the scale of the guest list and the energy of a Palestinian celebration that I loved even more. Two stand out: one of the bride seeing her son for the first time, which caused quite a stir on social media with over 80,000 likes, and another that beautifully captured the joy of a traditional Zeffe. Something that is a hallmark of an Arab wedding and hands down one of the most fun parts of a wedding day, and takes incredible skill as a photographer to capture well.
The “Royal Wedding” image was lit using a speedlight on a monopod, held by our team high to the couple’s left for soft, directional light. We used a MagMod grid and Magsphere to diffuse the light while keeping it from spilling into the background. It was shot on a Nikon Z 6II with a Nikon AF-S NIKKOR 35mm f/1.4G lens, at 1/200 of a second, f/2.2, ISO 800. I did a bit of retouching to remove a distracting light fixture in the background that couldn’t be avoided on-site. This image became part of a series we included in their album, and one of the couple’s personal favorites from the day.
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