The making of our wedding album
To escape prancing around an intensely scorching Singapore in full costumes, we had our photoshoot done in Taipei, Taiwan.
We rented a van (& driver) for the day to lug us, the photographer & his assistant, the equipment, make-up, and all our gowns, suits & accessories around. The most memorable part of the day was driving up dark, deserted alleys to change.
This photo was one of the first few we shot, and you can see from our pained expressions that we hadn’t quite warmed up to being models yet :D
Contrary to popular belief where the guys have zero interest in the wedding outfits, Mr had actually quite a lot of opinions on my wedding gown; probably more than I myself did! One of the things he fancied was a beautiful long train, and we took the above picture (the small one with a white border) specifically to capture the elegance of the train.
In the laying out of the pictures for our big, printed album, we were very cautious about having cutesy but nonsensical words in the pages – you know, the “You are my heaven and earth, the brightest star in the sky” kind of text. So we requested that any text to be incorporated used the passage that was read during our church wedding (Mark 10: 6-9) instead.
The first set of photos (as above), with all the greenery, were taken in a park (I forgot its name), and had all the traditional all-smiles poses. The picture on the right was taken to show off our wedding (& diamond) rings! Although I just realised it’s actually not that obvious.
We had the above pictures taken on a mountain (again I forgot its name). It was actually really chilly due to the wind, despite its deceiving bright sunlight. (& yes, the above picture is actually 2 pictures merged into one.)
This was where we began to warm up a little, so no more forced, cheery grins. The layout artist also added a very pretty purple touch to the background (it was actually green overgrown creepies on a concrete wall).
Having heard quite a bit about the famous themed Taiwanese cafes, we requested to do a shoot at one of them. This was a cute mural right outside the cafe that was picked by the photographer.
The wallpaper and decor inside was really pretty. And the head accessory that I requested for matched the whole ambience really well! :)
We were allowed to choose two gowns for our photoshoot – the actual gown that I’d be wearing on the day itself (only to be used indoors), and an “outdoor gown”, for places where the gown might potentially get dirty. Turns out the photographer recommended that I wear the “indoor gown” outdoors, due to its pretty train, and the “outdoor gown” indoors, as it was a short, light dress. (The dress in the above picture is the “outdoor gown” that we wore indoors :D)
Still within the cafe, the candles they had provided a nice lighting effect.
Yes, we ordered a mango slush because it was getting quite warm and tiring. The photographer had to remind us continuously to “not drink so fast” so he could snap his pictures – both of us were just eagerly gulping down the much-needed thirst-quencher!
The cafe, very nicely, was actually on a strip of beach. So once we were done inside, we trooped to the beach for the mandatory “gown flying in the wind by the sea” shot. To take this series, we actually had to climb up some scary-looking huge rocks. I was balanced precariously at the edge of the rocks and trying to smile bravely – thankfully I was in my Teva slippers instead of the 3-inch high white wedding heels.
& finally, the elusive sun-setting shot. This was quite a rush shoot with the photographer eager to catch every last bit of the sun. The sun set really fast though – in barely 15 minutes there was no light left!
There were just about a million other couples struggling to catch that last bit of sun as well, so it was quite a feat for our photographer to get a good angle while evading all the other people!
& finally, the backpage of the album: we requested for a photo collage, and were really pleased with how this turned out.
All in all, we’re really happy customers – no tacky 3D unicorns & brightly-coloured shiny rainbows floating in the background, cheesy texts & lyrics, terrible colours, over-cluttered pages… Yes, we love our album :)
