Imagine. It’s midnight. Your hair and makeup were finished hours ago. You’ve been zipped into your dress, heavy with embellishments, since 8 p.m. Your friends and mother and aunts have poked their heads into the room you occupy to check on you, but they’ve been busy greeting guests for the past few hours and making sure all the lights and flowers in the ballroom are perfect. It’s your wedding day—and you’re alone.

But if you’re lucky, you have photographer Tasneem Alsultan with you.

“We might not have [anything] else to do but chat,” Alsultan says of these nights. “We just start saying, ‘Oh my god, this is your big day! Do you realize that this is just the beginning of your lifetime?’