Arjun & Meera
A barefoot wedding on the Andaman Sea

The Story

Meera wrote to us in March 2023 — a year ahead, which is when we like to begin. She and Arjun had been engaged since November the year before, and they had decided early on that they didn't want a city wedding. They wanted somewhere they could walk barefoot, where their families could spend three uninterrupted days together, and where the sea could be in every photograph if it wanted to be.

Langkawi was chosen for its quietness. The west coast in particular, where the cliffs fold down into shallow water and the tide goes out so far in the morning that you can walk for ten minutes before it reaches your ankles. Their venue — a small private estate ten minutes from Pantai Tengah — had been holding two dates that month. They picked the one with the new moon.

"We barely felt them there until the gallery arrived. Every frame felt like memory, not performance."

We arrived on a Monday and spent the first afternoon walking the property with Meera's mother, who pointed out the trees her grandmother had planted forty years ago. The civil ceremony took place on Friday evening as the light went soft. The Hindu ceremony was Saturday at dawn — a three-hour service in Sanskrit and Tamil that ended just as the day began to be hot. Sunday was for swimming, mango, and dinner under a fig tree.

Haru shot the second angle. We worked quietly, mostly with prime lenses, and never asked anyone to look at us. The first time anyone in the family saw the photographs was three weeks later when the preview gallery went live. Meera's mother called us at 11pm Singapore time to thank us for "putting back the things she had missed while she was busy crying."