When Cultures ‘Click’

Wedding photographers with a cross-cultural focus capture the moments when two different families really do come together

By Jake Laub
CTW Features

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The multicultural wedding is a hotspot in America’s melting pot, and now there’s a wedding industry niche to go with it: the multicultural wedding photographer. Nowhere else is the fusion of America’s diversity more picture-perfect.

When Rima Mulla, a Saudi-American Muslim, married David Lewis, a Bostonian Jew, in October 2007, they had a honey ceremony. “We thought of honey because it’s mentioned in the Old Testament and in the Koran [as a symbol of a sweet future and good health],” Mulla says. “So we took verses from each of those holy books. I read the one from the Koran, then he read the one from the Torah.”

The ceremony was secular, administered by a friend, but the couple observed bits of tradition from both cultures. Mulla painted her hands with henna and to end the ceremony Lewis stepped on a glass to a chorus of “Mazel tovs!” The families mingled and mixed, and in the background a photographer captured on film another melting moment of America’s melting pot.

That photographer was Rachel Hadiashar, the founder of MERGE Weddings, Boston. As weddings such as Mulla and Lewis’ become more common – the percentage of interracial marriages in America tripled between 1970 and 1992, according to a University of Michigan study – multicultural wedding photographers have become a hot commodity.

Hadiashar is a prime of example of the new type. No stranger to the multicultural wedding (she recently married into a large, Persian-American family), her biggest asset is curiosity, she says. “There’s the mentality, ‘Oh, he’s [South Asian], so he’s going to shoot our [South Asian] wedding better. But sometimes when I get to [a South Asian] wedding, for example, I’m so excited about the new colors and family and traditions that I’m documenting it like crazy.”

Seshu Badrinath, another multicultural wedding photographer, says his strength lies in getting to know his clients well. Although he himself is an Indian-American, even Indian weddings are often a new cultural experience for him. Just as culture varies widely from California to Alaska, so India also contains a multitude of cultures. That leaves him with a lot of observing and learning to do, which he relishes. “From my perspective I know I can take good images if I have a good sense of who my clients are,” Seshu says. “I’m a historian, anthropologist, journalist and artist wrapped up into one.”

For Mulla and Lewis, a multiculturally focused photographer like Hadiashar fit their needs exactly. With a personal curiosity in the merging of people and cultures, Hadiashar was able to go beyond her role as just a wedding documenter, and her clients were enchanted with the results. “There’s a lot that goes into each of our identities that goes far beyond the Jewish-Muslim thing,” Mulla says. “We wanted our entire selves to be captured in the photography, we didn’t just want one aspect of our identities captured ... She got it.”

That’s the trick of the multicultural wedding photographer, to not only capture a unique blend of heritage, but also the spirit of the people in that context. It’s not easy sticking your camera lens into the heat of America’s melting pot, but when done correctly, the results can really glow.

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