Samode Palace Wedding Guide

Samode began in the sixteenth century as a Rajput fort and was redesigned in the nineteenth into the palace you see now, laced with carved pillars, hidden alcoves, and terraces, its walls and ceilings painted with murals in vibrant colour. It is built for a wedding weekend: rooms and suites under one roof, layers of intimate courtyards and gardens, a pool, and a new backdrop around every corner. The palette of warm yellow walls, pink bougainvillea, and painted arches takes the saturated colour of an Indian wedding beautifully, and it is still the venue we call our favourite.

Inside the walls, the courtyards are where a wedding at Samode finds its look. Warm yellow plaster rises to rows of arched windows, and in March the bougainvillea spilled over the palace walls in sprays of magenta, so we stood Ritika and Vivek beneath it, small against all that colour, with the sun raking across the wall. The palace calls its courtyard a favourite spot among guests, and for the wedding it was dressed with tables and the couple's monogram, a scene that reads like a map from above.

For Ritika and Vivek's wedding the sky was clear and the sun was strong, hard and bright on the yellow walls, which keeps colour punchy but throws deep shadows, so we used the shade of the arches and doorways for close portraits. The best light starts about two hours before sunset, and in March the sun sets at about half past six, so the late afternoon belongs to the courtyards and terraces, when the walls warm toward gold.

A great wooden door beneath a pointed arch, its planks weathered dark against the pale wall, for a quiet portrait side by side · The terraces, where a small white chhatri stands against the green Aravalli hills, made for a twirl of the lehenga · Scalloped arches painted with sprigs of gold flowers, where confetti fell around the two of them · The vintage cars at the entrance, among them a red one with Samode on its number plate · A broad flight of stone steps below the yellow walls, where a lehenga can spill across the stairs

After sunset the palace becomes a second venue. During Ritika and Vivek's wedding the whole facade glowed gold, the mandap stood at the edge of the pool with the double staircase rising behind it, and the water doubled every light. We photographed the two of them at the foot of a staircase lit amber, with sparklers fountaining on either side. Five minutes of night portraits by the pool is always worth it here, and the palace does most of the work.

Jaipur is about an hour away and well connected by rail, road, and air, and the palace puts the drive from Delhi to Jaipur at about three hours on the expressway. The palace has forty three rooms and suites, and for a bigger celebration it can be booked together with Samode Bagh, the family's garden retreat seven minutes' drive away, whose banquet suite holds up to five hundred guests. The Durbar Hall, the old royal court room with its frescoes, suits grand celebrations and seated dinners, and the Sheesh Mahal, the Hall of Mirrors, is a dining room for couples. Neither is an everyday lounge, so if you want portraits inside, we flag and arrange it early.

Ritika and Vivek's March wedding at Samode Palace lives in full in our journal, sixty one photographs and their highlight film, from the bougainvillea courtyards to the mandap by the pool.