Ottawa Indian Wedding at Brookstreet Hotel with Outdoors Traditional Hindu Ceremony | Ottawa Wedding Photographer
Ottawa Indian Wedding at Brookstreet Hotel with Outdoors Traditional Hindu Ceremony
Mili and Sriram planned a spring wedding in Ottawa and chose Brookstreet Hotel as their Venue. Their wedding featured a beautiful multicultural Barat as well as a beautiful outdoors Hindu Wedding Ceremony that despite the rain, still was held outside under a beautiful tent.
You can also see Mili and Sriram’s two-part engagement photoshoot at Alan’s Garden and The Distillery District in Toronto here and here.
Hindu ceremonies usually take place in the morning, so we started the day super early with the bride and groom preparations. Afterwards we had a moment for the couple’s photos before heading to the traditional Hindu Ceremony.
If you are not familiar with the traditions of Hindu weddings and Indian weddings in general, the groom usually makes his entrance first surrounded by his family. This is called the Baraat. The Baraat is always accompanied by music and a traditional drum player called Dholak or Dohlki. Since Sriram is half Indian and half Scottish, his Baraat featured both a Dholak player and Scottish bagpipes player which was the first time I have seen it, but I loved it.
After the groom’s Baraat, the bride comes with her uncles who hand her over to the groom at the Mandap. I loved the simplicity and elegance of this mandap décor. The pink and blush chiffon and the flowers were just the perfect setup for this Hindu Ceremony. If you pay attention to the groom’s entrance you will see that the sister of the bride stole and hid his shoes to exchange for money later which is a popular wedding game in many South Asian weddings called Joota Chupai or shoe stealing game. Usually the negotiations for the shoes go on for a long time but Sriram was generous and got his shoes back right away.
After both parties have entered and sat on the mandap, the priest reads prayers for the Ganesh Poojan to remove any obstacles for the ceremony and then the bride and groom exchange garlands to welcome each other into each other's families.
In the Mangalfera ritual, the bride and groom walk in circles around the fire while uncles and cousins throw flower petals at them. Fire in Hindu ceremonies is considered a purifier and sustainer of life. The families make offerings to the fire and at the end the ceremony a red powder called Sindoor is applied to the hair of the brie to indicate that she is married.
Hindu ceremonies can be long and last from 1.5 to 3 hours. After which the couple went back to their hotel rooms at Brookstreet and changed outfits for the second part of the day. We sneaked outside for few photos despite the rain and then headed to the cocktail and reception. And if you know Indian and South Asian weddings, they feature a lot of dancing and fun performances that last well into the night.
I absolutely loved Mili and Sriram’s wedding and all its traditional elements but also had a blast with the couple as they kept their energy high despite the tiring day and made this 16+ hours day a blast.
If you want to see a speciic section of the wedding day, you can click on the title below to jump to that gallery:
