Recently we shot the wedding of Vasu and Shruthi in Malibu at the Hindu Temple Society of Southern California. Upon arriving, we were allowed through the gates of the Malibu Hindu Temple grounds to see several buildings and structures that completely transport you right out of Southern California.

While the weather definitely wasn’t cooperating with us for most of the day, it did provide some amazing lighting and clouds in between the torrential rains. Below are several detail shots of the buildings and architecture on the grounds of the Hindu Temple Society of Southern California.

Below is a fisheye shot of the Malibu Hindu Temple entrance. Shoes are not allowed inside of the temple grounds, even when raining, so it was a cold wet morning for our bare little feet.

Below is a shot of one of the building tops on the Malibu Hindu Temple grounds just as the sun was rising at around 6:30am.

The detail built into the building architecture on the Malibu Hindu Temple grounds was quite amazing, deserving of lots of detail shots!

Here is a little closer view of the entrance of the Malibu Hindu Temple.

There are several different buildings and structures on the Malibu Hindu Temple grounds, this is a shot of a little prayer alter.

Unfortunately, we weren’t able to go into this building, but that didn’t stop us from taking cool shots of it!

Below is a shot of Shruthi’s hands detailing the intricate mendi artwork and ornate jewelry that adorned our beautiful bride.

Address: Malibu Hindu Temple 1600 Las Virgenes Canyon Rd, Calabasas, CA‎ – (818) 880-5552‎

If you are interested in booking Lin and Jirsa Photography, visit our Contact Page or call our studio at 310.993.5619

Article written by Lin and Jirsa Photography authors of SLR Lounge and Lin and Jirsa Blog Los Angeles & Orange County Wedding Photographers

We really loved Vasu and Shruthi’s ceremony and all the meaning placed behind each ritual. So, rather than doing a traditional blog entry for the ceremony, we wanted to tell the story of the ceremony and help our readers to understand each moment of the ceremony.

The ceremony took place inside of the main building at the Malibu Hindu Temple and since it was a traditional South Indian Wedding it started at around 6:00am and ended around 11:00am.

The Hindu ceremony called the “Muhurtham” is composed of several smaller rituals, each completely filled with intricate symbolism. The wedding ceremony begins as the groom takes up asceticism or monkhood as his spiritual path, this ritual is an ancient Brahmin tradition called the “Kasi yaatrai” shown below.

The picture below continues with the Kasi yaatrai, as the groom is “convinced” by the bride’s father to return to the world and take up family life so that the wife may assist in the grooms spiritual journey together.

The next ritual in the ceremony called the “Maalai maatral” where the bride and groom place garlands on each other. For sheer enjoyment, this process is often made more challenging as the bride and grooms families hoist them up into the air and try to make it more difficult to place the garlands over each other’s heads as shown below. Which, I do agree was quite enjoyable!

Once the garlands have been placed, the bride and groom are both seated on a swing or “oonjal” (as shown below) in the mandapam. Then the respected womenfolk of each household will sing traditional songs and perform various rituals to ward off “evil eyes.”

After the bride and groom left the oonjal, we proceeded outside where the womenfolk performed rituals, and a traditional dance and song as they walked around the peepul tree. Luckily, the rain did manage to stop for a few minutes during this portion of the ceremony.

Here our bride is breaking a coconut and pouring the milk into the base of the plant to nourish the peepul tree.

Afterwards, we proceeded back inside of the Malibu Hindu Temple to continue with the Muhurtham ceremony. Before proceeding, the womenfolk started off by grinding grains together with a large staff as shown below.

The ceremony is finalized when the bride is seated on her father’s lap, the “kannigadhaanam,” as the groom ties a necklace around the bride’s neck which signifies that the daughter is to be taken care of the by the groom. Meanwhile, the guests shower the bride and groom with their blessings symbolized by throwing rice. Given our positions, we got a good helping of “blessings” tossed at the backs of our heads as well, haha.

Below, the priest is happily introducing Vasu and Shruthi, the newly weds to the entire crowd, which mind you was quite a few people!

Address: Malibu Hindu Temple 1600 Las Virgenes Canyon Rd, Calabasas, CA‎ – (818) 880-5552‎

If you are interested in booking Lin and Jirsa Photography, visit our Contact Page or call our studio at 310.993.5619

Article written by Lin and Jirsa Photography authors of SLR Lounge and Lin and Jirsa Blog Los Angeles & Orange County Wedding Photographers

While we did run into some time constraints, we still managed to get our couple out and about for some lovely Lin and Jirsa style couples shots. Is it ok that I call our own work lovely?

Shruthi was gorgeous and her mendi was so amazing that we wanted to really show it off.

We began our couples session by heading onto the actual sacred temple grounds of the Malibu Hindu Temple. Of course, we need to start every shoot with just a nice basic portrait of our lovely couples =).

Afterwards, Vasu and Shruthi were inspired to do a traditional Indian expressionless shot in front of the temple. I think they nailed the look, they had to have practiced!

The temple makes such a beautiful background, and for you photogs, you will need a couple off camera lights if you want to recreate this shot =)

Address: Malibu Hindu Temple 1600 Las Virgenes Canyon Rd, Calabasas, CA‎ – (818) 880-5552‎

If you are interested in booking Lin and Jirsa Photography, visit our Contact Page or call our studio at 310.993.5619

Article written by Lin and Jirsa Photography authors of SLR Lounge and Lin and Jirsa Blog Los Angeles & Orange County Wedding Photographers

Once we finished up at the Malibu Hindu Temple we headed over to Burbank to the Castaway, an awesome restaurant slash special events venue perched on the cliff-side overlooking all of Burbank. I must say that the entire venue was quite spectacular. From talking with the event relations staff, I found out that the Castaway is a very popular wedding location. So, hopefully we will be able to bring our style of wedding photography and engagement photography to the Castaway scene ;).

While the shot below isn’t anything crazy, we wanted everyone to get a little taste of the view peering out of the windows at the Castaway. This shot was taken about an hour after sunset while there was still some good color in the sky.

Only way to top this wedding cake was to have three of them! While they didn’t actually have three cakes, we were able to take this reflection shot using some creative back-lighting and the large windows at the Castaway restaurant.

The Castaway was not only well lit, it was also elegantly lit. Check out the rows of chandeliers across the ballroom ceiling.

If you present the opportunity, we will make the shot. Here, the lovely staff at the Castaway gave us a moment to take a shot of them. So, we arranged them into a nice little line and grabbed a set of very cool shots that I think they will love!

Address: The Castaway Restaurant, 1250 East Harvard Road, Burbank, CA‎ – (818) 848-6691‎

If you are interested in booking Lin and Jirsa Photography, visit our Contact Page or call our studio at 310.993.5619

Article written by Lin and Jirsa Photography authors of SLR Lounge and Lin and Jirsa Blog Los Angeles & Orange County Wedding Photographers

We literally stole our bride and groom away for a little bit of time during the reception and did a short little couples session at night on the grounds at the Castaway Restaurant.

We love twinklies! So, we absolutely had to grab a shot of Vasu and Shruthi with the entire frame being filled with twinkling Burbank city lights. This shot was taken on the backside balcony of the Castaway.

The shot below was taken in the corridor leading to our ballroom at the Castaway. Yes, there are some creative lighting techniques employed, haha.

Given the clouds and the view, we couldn’t pass up this shot on the balcony of the Castaway restaurant with our bride and groom just chilling sharing an intimate moment. Come to think of it, chilling is an appropriate word given how freezing cold it was!

In looking at some of the Castaway’s photos hanging on the walls, we noticed a lot of nice gazebo shots. So, we wanted to show them what we can do with this awesome scene. Hopefully they will like our take on the scene =).

Address: The Castaway Restaurant, 1250 East Harvard Road, Burbank, CA‎ – (818) 848-6691‎

If you are interested in booking Lin and Jirsa Photography, visit our Contact Page or call our studio at 310.993.5619

Article written by Lin and Jirsa Photography authors of SLR Lounge and Lin and Jirsa Blog Los Angeles & Orange County Wedding Photographers

To conclude the event, here is a little sample of some of the shots that we grabbed during the reception at the Castaway.

To start it off, the grand entrance of course!

As usual, a big part of our focus is making sure that we get awesome candid imagery.

There is an amazingly funny story behind this shot, unfortunately, due to length and other reasons, it cannot be shown here. I am sure that everyone at the wedding will appreciate the shot though =).

Many of Vasu and Shruthi’s family came from India to attend the wedding.

This had to be one of the coolest Indian dance performances I have ever seen. These guys danced so well it looked like they came straight out of the credits of your favorite Bollywood movie, fabulous job guys!

Toasts and speeches are one of our favorite times of the day to capture awesome candids.

It seemed so easy to create cool shots during the first dance given the amazing lighting setup in the Castaway ballroom.

Time to party! We have so many great dance shots of all the guests. Here is one of my favs.

Ok, so during the toasts, we heard that Vasu used to be on the dance team. But dang, little did we know that Vasu has some rediculous moves. The guy is an amazing dancer. Oh, yeah, and if we forgot to mention, Vasu is also a Doctor of internal medicine. Yeah… I ain’t never seen a doctor get down like this before!

Address: The Castaway Restaurant, 1250 East Harvard Road, Burbank, CA‎ – (818) 848-6691‎

If you are interested in booking Lin and Jirsa Photography, visit our Contact Page or call our studio at 310.993.5619

Article written by Lin and Jirsa Photography authors of SLR Lounge and Lin and Jirsa Blog Los Angeles & Orange County Wedding Photographers