Artsy yet Chic

Julia was among the most fun brides to work with. She had preferences but as an excellent artist (photographer) herself, she let me have artistic freedom. As a photographer, she had an eye for detail, a quality which I personally love, so I tried to reflect this in her mehendi pattern. Furthermore, I am in completely awe of the pictures for these emulate Julia's style in a beautiful way. These pictures were shot by the very talented Ms. Tina Shah Doshi from KSD Weddings.

The front of her hands were painted with more traditional and intricate work. The picture of Lord Ganesh seen on her left hand, was inspired by a pattern on her invitation. While not visible in this picture, what made her mehendi pattern really artsy was the picture of a bride and a groom under a tree on separate hands. Julia trusted my artistic judgement enough to have a bold pattern of tree encasing much more delicate patterns of the bride and groom.

What made Julia's mehendi design chic was the pattern on the back of her hands. It's a fusion between arabic and traditional designs. Julia chose to do this pattern on the back side to balance out the intricacy of the work done on the front of her hands. I love that you can clearly see the floral patterns because of the negative space around it.

Lastly, what made my work for Julia even more interesting was that she requested me to do a little design for her invitation. Being on Jewish and Japanese heritage and marrying someone
of Indian origin, Julia wanted to incorporate something from all cultures so I came up with the a pattern from her theme-elephants. The elephants have Japanese and Indian motifs while the trunk of the elephants have a hebrew phrase inscribed (it means I am beloved's, my beloved is mine). Furthermore, to honor her husband's Gujarati heritage, I wrote their names in Gujarati.

This is just an example of the many ways mehendi patterns can be incorporated into details of your event. If any bride would like for me to do this, it would be my pleasure. It's so much fun coming up with these designs!