Sometimes in the midst of all the future planning and all, we pay too much attention on what's going to happen in the future and forget the simple act of living the present, enjoying each other's presence and just be happy with what we have and who we are. Right at this moment. Right now. Balance - the often heard keyword that so many talk about but only so few lived it out.
Couples these days spend tens of thousands in recreating the dream Hollywood / fairy tale inspired weddings, for just that one (maybe two, maybe three) day and but hardly gave any thought on how are they going to live together for the next 365x(n years) days ahead. People of our time could afford weddings so lavish that just one generation ago, our parents could not even picture it in their head. But I doubt if the family and marriage instituion is any more sacred or intact now than it was decades ago.
So for this week, let's be reminded to live the present.
We haven't been updating this blog as often as we would like. He is too busy maintaining his other automotive industry site, while she is working on the house and invitation cards. More on those in another post.
In this post we would like to share a bit about our experience with our bridal studio.
Prior to this we have visited many other bridal studios in bridal fair expos. We weren't really happy with most of them. A large majority of those studios were heavily influenced by Taiwanese style aesthetics. They took great pride in their "Taiwanese connection" and very often their first sales pitch to us is "we are not a local company, we are a Taiwanese company," in Mandarin of course, to which he would flatly tell them sorry we want a local company and we are not interested in having a Taiwanese photographer. We are proud of our own identity as Malaysians of ethnic Chinese descent, plus we both come from a very Westernized education and family background. Thus, we find the photography work and gown selection of many of these studios as being a bit "overly bling" for our taste. Obviously she doesn't fancy having her pre-wedding shots with an A-Mei inspired hairdo and neither does he fancy looking like any F4 groupie.
Out of the many studios that we visited, we shortlisted two studios - Lasposa in Bangsar (has since shifted to SS2) and Vogue Collection.
In choosing a bridal studio (as well as photographer and videographer), it is very important to have a supplier who understands your style. It's not just about the language issue, she has not much problem communicating in Mandarin. But it's about the coming together of the makeup artist, photographer and having the right gown selection in re-creating the highly subjective photographic result that you are looking for.
When we first stepped in to Vogue, we spoke to Lily, their make-up artist. Almost immediately we could tell that this is a team that we could click with. Plus, we don't need to worry of anything being "lost in translation." We looked through their sample photo albums and their gown selection and knew this was the one we want to work with. They were very helpful and unlike many sales staff in other studios, they were not very pushy in pressuring us to sign up with them.
We had similarly good experience with Lasposa, but for us the deal breaker was the availability of digital soft copies of our photos for our keeping. Being a typical Gen-Y couple who relies heavily on the Internet, we don't really see the point of paying so much to have a physical hard cover photo album. With a digital soft copy, we can do anything we want with the photos in the future. And unlike the physical hard copy photo album, the photos won't degrade over time. Also, do you really think the photo album will be of great use many decades later? If you really need to have a hard copy photo album, there are online services like Photobook Malaysia. With this service you don't even need to rely on the photography / bridal studio to create the photo album for you. So what we did was to negotiate with the studio to reduce the number of photo albums / photo count in the albums in exchange for the option to allow us to retain the digital softcopies of all our photos. From our many studio hunting trips, only Vogue Gallery and Lasposa are willing to give us all the raw high resolution image files. Of course, we will have to pay an additional charge for each photo taken. There are also some other studios that will claim to offer similar services, but probe further you will find out that the photos are not the high resolution files and are locked for editing. In the end, Vogue provided the most favourable price and we signed up with them.
We are really thankful and appreciative of the work being done by the team at Vogue Collection. From what we see, the bridal studio business involves very long working hours. They work up to 10pm everyday with only 1 day off per week. And customers are not always understanding or are easy to work with.
There are some few simple things you can do to make their life easier. Just because you are the paying customer does not mean you have a moral right to lord over others / disrespect them. 1. Punctuality. Always make an appointment before seeing your supplier and arrive on time. Delays on your part will cause further delays to the next customer. If you have to postpone / cancel your appointment please do inform them in the soonest possible.
2. Bring magazines / photos from the Internet of your ideal gown. It will greatly help them to visualize the kind of shots or style that you are looking for.
3. Be nice and polite to others. Some women, by virtue of them being the bride, love all the attention given to them and enjoy pushing little minions around to do their bidding. But remember that karma (or whatever you choose to call it) has a funny way of getting even. Be nice and make friends with everybody in the team. In one of our gown fitting sessions, there was a delay in our appointment caused by another couple from an earlier time slot (read our earlier point on punctuality...), thus our usual contact person were not able to attend to us. However Vogue's in-house tailor, Sze Phing was kind enough to step in and assist us (this was beyond her job requirements) as we have gotten to know most of the nice people in Vogue. Thus we were able to proceed with our gown fitting right away.
4. Find a team that you are able to communicate easily with. Do not assume that the studio understands what you want. Take initiative to communicate your requirements throughout the different stages of your wedding preparation.
Below is a promo video for Vogue Collection. The photographer shown here is the same photographer who took our pre-wedding shots. His name is Ah Weng, great funny guy who tries his best to help you relax to bring out that million dollar smile. He had a really hard time getting Gim to smile properly. Gim has this unexplained inability to smile in front of a camera. He can't differentiate between smiling and breathing with his mouth.
We were so blessed to come across a moving out sale by a designer label. Before this, she could not really find a gown that "clicks right away" from our bridal gallery Vogue Collection. Not that the selection was bad, in fact we managed to get some really good gowns for our pre-wedding shots. But somehow this time around, the selections available were just average. As with all bridal galleries, you can't change your gown selection dates around and you need to decide on your gown rentals many months in advance. Sometimes it all depends on your luck, on whether the ones you like are available. She had to settle for one which looks rather average. Nothing really bad about it but it's nothing much to really like either.
Then she came across the Carven Ong ad, made a trip down to Lot 10, and woila, the right gown was just there. It was the first gown she put on, and it was one of those that you knew "this is the one" right away. Got it 50% off the sticker price. She actually got a designer label gown, one that she really loves, at a really good bargain. And to top if off, her best friend is sponsoring a pair of custom made shoes from Singapore.
Gown hunting can be quite a tiring process for the lady. I too thought of nothing much about it until I tried carrying these gowns around between the display rack and the fitting area. Carbon fibre gown anyone?
She is such a hot sweet young thing! Too bad the same can't be said for her male counterpart. But what he lacks in short term fashionable appeal to draw enough attention for a cruise along Sunset Boulevard, he makes it up with a reliability to face the day to day traffic grind.
An unlimited mileage bumper to bumper warranty coverage against a deceitful heart, rogue testicles, falling out of each other and everything else in between.
When they first met, he thinks she was stucked up hot babe, she thinks he is a loud annoying geek. She would have fainted had she know back then that she will eventually marry him later in life. Today, she thinks Prius is cool and wishes to watch Monaco GP live someday while he...well he is just pretty hopeless in anything without her.
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