The couple’s planner sends the schedule and it runs to two pages. Haldi on Thursday morning at the family home. Mehndi that evening. Sangeet on Friday at a function centre with a stage, a DJ and LED walls. The ceremony on Saturday, then the reception the same night. You and a second shooter covered all of it, and there is a videographer on the film side with three cameras. The cards add up to more frames than your last four weddings together, and the couple want sneak peeks by next week.
If you shoot South Asian weddings in Sydney or Melbourne, you know this wedding well. Here is how to think about editing it, and how we handle it when studios send one to us.
The community behind these weddings
In the 2021 Census, India-born residents became Australia’s third-largest country-of-birth group, after Australia and England, according to the ABS. SBS reports Indians as the second-largest migrant group in the country, at about 710,000 people. SBS also reported that Punjabi became the fifth most-spoken language other than English in the 2021 Census.
Those figures cover India alone. Pakistani, Sri Lankan, Bangladeshi, Nepali and Afghan families hold multi-day weddings too, each with its own order of events and its own expectations, and a studio in Sydney or Melbourne may shoot several different orders of events in one season.
Why multi-day weddings break a normal workflow
A standard wedding workflow assumes one day, one light plan and one gallery. A South Asian wedding often breaks every one of those:
- Volume. Several events, long days, big guest lists and two or more shooters can run well past what a single-day cull is built for.
- Very different light per event. Morning daylight at a haldi, warm tungsten at a mehndi, coloured stage light at a sangeet, mixed daylight and venue light at the ceremony.
- Many people who must be in the gallery. Grandparents, aunts and uncles on both sides, family friends who travelled. Missing one matters.
- Separate deliverables. Families often expect a gallery or film per event as well as an overall highlight.
So the edit needs a plan before anyone opens Lightroom.
Event by event: what each one needs
The order and names change from family to family, and the couple’s own schedule is the one to follow. As a rough guide to how the edit differs:
| Event | Typical light | What the edit has to protect |
|---|---|---|
| Haldi | Daylight, often outdoors or at home | Yellow paste on skin and clothes that still looks natural, not jaundiced |
| Mehndi | Warm, low, decorative | Henna detail on hands, rich fabrics, colour-heavy decor |
| Sangeet | Stage lights, LEDs, haze | Faces under coloured light, noise in dark crowd shots, performance energy |
| Ceremony | Mixed daylight and venue light | Vivid outfits, the families around the stage, gold and red that doesn’t clip |
| Reception | Tungsten, uplights, flash | Consistency with the ceremony, entrances and speeches, the dance floor |
For films, each event also has its own audio: the mehndi music, the sangeet performances, the ceremony itself, the speeches. Multi-cam sync and audio clean-up matter more here than at almost any other wedding.
Colour-heavy decor against true skin
This is the hardest part of the grade. Marigolds, deep red and gold lehengas, pink and orange drapes, coloured stage washes. All of it should stay rich. None of it should bleed into faces.
We grade skin first. Once skin is right for an event, decor is brought in around it. If a pink stage light is turning the bride’s face magenta, the fix goes on the face, not on the whole frame, so the stage keeps its colour. Gold jewellery and embroidery are watched closely, because they clip quickly under flash.
Skin tone across days is the other test. The couple need to look like the same people at the haldi as at the reception. We pick an anchor event, usually the ceremony, and check every other event against it in grid view before delivery.
Culling for family, not just for moments
A good cull for a South Asian wedding is not only the best frames. It is the right people. Your brief is the place to tell us who must be in the gallery, and how families expect the groups to be covered.
Useful things to include:
- A list of key family members, or the group shots you were asked for.
- Which events need a full gallery and which need a shorter set.
- Moments the family specifically asked for.
- Anything that shouldn’t be shown, such as moments the family asked you to leave out.
We work through each event against that list. It is your brief that makes the cull right, and we’ll ask if anything is unclear rather than guess.
Films: one per event, plus a highlight
On the film side we can cut one film per event and a highlight across the whole wedding. Some families want the sangeet performances kept in full. Others want the ceremony complete and the other events short. Tell us in the brief, and send the music choices for each film if you have them.
Every camera is matched to one look before the cut, so the sangeet doesn’t look like a different wedding from the ceremony. If the couple want something for social media early, three 9:16 reels are A$60.
What it costs
A big or multi-day wedding is charged at the same standard package prices as any other wedding. There is no separate rate for more events, more guests or longer days. The Wedding gallery covers up to 3,000 raws across the whole wedding, all days and events together. Our prices, fixed in AUD:
| Package | What’s included | Price |
|---|---|---|
| Wedding gallery | 300 to 500 culled and graded images, up to 3 revisions | A$120 |
| Highlight film | 5 to 8 minutes, 1 to 3 cameras, drone included | A$150 |
| Highlight + Feature | Both films, a 1-minute teaser, speeches in full | A$375 |
| Complete | Wedding gallery, highlight film and feature film, one grade across all | A$450 |
Three 9:16 social reels are A$60 and album design across 20 spreads is A$90, if you want them.
To get started, send:
- The event list and what you want delivered, such as gallery, film or both.
- The number of shooters and cameras.
- The footage link from Dropbox, Google Drive, WeTransfer, pCloud or Box.
- Your preset, three to five finished frames, and any deadline the family has set.
We confirm the packages, the price and the delivery date before any work starts, and you pay only once you have agreed them. Standard turnaround is 7 business days from the moment the link works and the brief is complete, with weekends and Australian public holidays not counted.
Start with one event
If you’ve never sent a multi-day wedding out, don’t start with the whole thing. Send one event, such as the mehndi or the reception, as your free trial. It is edited exactly like a paid project, and it shows you how we handle the colour and the people before you trust us with the rest.
- Start your free trial
- Send a project brief
- See packages and prices
- See what we edit, including multi-day weddings
Shooting in Victoria? Read the Melbourne wedding editing guide, or the Sydney guide for Western Sydney.