Kaningai weds Ihiumei (Tamenglong, Manipur)
No matter how many weddings you cover some just have a special place in your heart. This was one of the very first weddings I covered and after these many years of shooting weddings I still haven't come across such humble people and such a beautiful wedding. Being the avid travel photographer that I am, we went to Tamenglong a week before the wedding to cover the very famous orange festival which fortunetly was 2 days before the wedding. It was a 6 hours of the most rough road ride in the back seat of a sumo with 7 other passengers from Imphal to Tamenglong. Once we reached, the groom; Kane, gave us accomodation in his own house and we were treated like royalties. I probably was the only vegetarian in the entire town and they made special arragements for my food.
A day before the wedding was the dress rehersal and all the arrangements from decoration to food, dresses to flowers were prepared by friends and relatives. We too jumped in to help them set the place up. The wedding day was nothing like I expected. People were calm and composed and no one was rushing anywhere. I reached the bride's place and to my surprise there were no fancy make up artists or fancy dresses. The friends were doing the make up and dress was hand stiched. She kept laughing cause they kept messing the hair up. The ceremony was the most beautiful one I have seen and they were humble enough to even thank us on stage for flying down to cover the wedding. We finally shot the couple walking into the sunset and I thought to myself 'Don't I have the best job in the world?."
This wedding series also got nominated in Best Wedding Series in The Better Photography Magazine-' Wedding Photography Photographer of the year award 2010. And also the 6th image displayed here in the series won the Best Behind the Scene photography in Best Wedding Series in The Better Photography Magazine-'Wedding Photography Photographer of the year award 2013'.