“When he’s around, my stomach doesn’t flutter, my palms don’t sweat, my head doesn’t spin. My heartbeat softens, knowing it’s safe. My waist craves his touch, my hand searches for his in the dark, my lips find his shoulder. There is no falling in love. There is just love” is what Tushar and Ajita responded with when we asked them which quote resonated best with them. A truly beautiful and heartfelt quote that summarises an equally beautiful couple and wedding.
For Tushar and Ajita, it was love at first sight, or more specifically, love at first sound. The wedding for these two was arranged by their parents and they couldn’t have done a more amazing job at matchmaking – Tushar and Ajita’s first contact was over the phone and after just 30 minutes of chatting, Tushar just new that he had to make the trip up from Melbourne to Brisbane to meet this amazing woman who was to become his wife, and the rest is history! Soon after, the two were engaged, Tushar popped the question overlooking a vast glacial lake in New Zealand while on holiday, Ajita may have had tonsillitis at the time, but the answer was still the same – yes!
It was time for Tushar and Ajita to start planning their wedding days and they chose none other than the beautiful Flaxton Gardens to hold their two day long celebration! The first day of the wedding was the Haldi (or turmeric) ceremony, in which the couples friends and family take it in turns to apply haldi to them. Haldi is applied with mango leaves to the face/neck, arms, hands, knees, and feet of the couple, which simultaneously offers them blessing and cleanses them. The colours of this ceremony were absolutely stunning, the yellow-gold hues of the haldi covered everything and really popped in the Queensland sun. Once the couple are covered in the haldi, it is tradition for the guests to wash it off with water, but with this being a Queensland wedding in the middle of summer, Tushar and Ajita opted for a dip in the pool instead! We honestly had so much fun photographing this ceremony, but we would hate to be the guy cleaning the pool the next day!
The second day was also full of excitement, day one was just a warm up in comparison! The day started off with Ajita and Tushar getting dressed into their traditional clothing, this time they were adorned in beautiful reds, whites and golds. The stage was set for the wedding ceremony, a stunning mandap had been set up with more red and white roses than one could care to count. Flaxton Gardens comes equipped with a helipad and it would be rude to have a wedding there and not take advantage of that, Tushar made his grand entrance from above in a helicopter that he caught from Maroochydore airport, just down the road. He then made the rest of the trip to the mandap on the back of a decorated sangeet tricycle where he was greeted by the wedding guests and of course, his bride-to-be, Ajita. The traditional ceremony went off without a hitch and the couple left being showered by red rose petals thrown by their adoring guests.
After the ceremony, Tushar and Ajita changed into their western wedding outfits, the black tuxedo and stunning white dress. We took them to a beautiful mountain top meadow overlooking the amazing Glasshouse mountains and photographed them as the day turned to dusk behind them. We absolutely love photographing couples in the late evening, it means that we get to take advantage of the golden hour, the sunset and we also get the chance to get a few night time shots before we leave. It’s amazing to see how different one location can look under different lighting situations, it also gives our couples a larger variety of images in the same timeframe. We then drove back to Flaxton Gardens for the reception which was full of dancing all night long. Indian wedding receptions always have such great energy and it’s so rare to see so many people up and dancing so passionately! We are so grateful that we got the opportunity to capture Tushar and Ajita’s magical wedding day, it was so full of love, tradition, laughter and unique moments!
