What is the ruling on entering a wedding hall, taking pictures in it, and clapping for the bride without dancing? Is it permissible to use a closed drum (al-fad‘oos) or a drum open from the back (al-darbuka)?

Your entry into the wedding hall with your bride among your *mahrams* (unmarriageable kin) is permissible. Photography is permissible, provided there is security against non-mahram (definition) men seeing the women's pictures. As for drumming at the wedding, there is a difference of opinion among scholars, and the safer approach is to limit it to the *duff* (tambourine) and what is similar to it.