Orthodox Jewish Wedding Photography

An Orthodox wedding is not a wedding with some extra customs bolted on. It is a different evening with a different order, and almost everything that makes it photographically difficult happens in the first two hours, before a photographer who has not done one before has worked out what is going on.

Kabbalas panim and the tisch run simultaneously in two rooms, so somebody has to be in each. The badeken lasts about ninety seconds, happens in a corridor of people, and is over before a camera can be repositioned. The chuppah is frequently outdoors at dusk. The dancing is separate, which means the men's side and the women's side both need proper coverage and a long lens across a mechitzah is not it. And the mitzvah tantz, the emotional centre of the night for many families, happens at one in the morning in almost no light. None of that is improvised well. We have shot it several hundred times.