1. Wedding reception/day/dinner/luncheon in a restaurant/community hall.
2. Studio photo which photographs you and your spouse, and it only consist of 2 frames:
i) First frame: Bride and Groom standing hand in hand with each other.
ii) Second frame: Bride sits on a chair and Groom standing next to her.
3. All with camera film rolls. Photoshop does not exist yet.
....while in this decade, a wedding gets much more complicated.
Reception
This part cannot avoid if you are Chinese. But hey, exceptions exists whereby I've got this colleague who has not conducted her wedding reception since 5 years back. She's legally married, but no reception. Well, not a problem actually. It was for the reason of cost and hassle. Wedding receptions ain't cheap anymore. If ambient is your choice i.e. hotel, then there might be a trade-off in terms of food quality and taste, and vice versa. No doubt some places have the best of both worlds.
Customs like tea ceremony for the Chinese is unavoidable. I've not seen a Chinese wedding that has not had their tea ceremony done. But many Chinese (many Gen X and Y who has had their knowledge of Chinese customs diluted) do not perform the traditional guo dai lei (betrothal gifts) anymore. Also many Chinese has followed the western tradition completely - which is completely fine - though I find the traditional Chinese customs still relevant, symbolical, and personally - a must. Nothing to do with religion, mind you. It's all customs that I believe should be kept through the generations and not get adulterated by other wedding styles.
Helloooo, we even sought Mak Seng Loong for their timing and date selections. Again, nothing religious.
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| Don't ask me the content. All in chinese wei. |
The great outdoors
The biggest trend setter in the current wedding scene. To say this trend is 'current' is not entirely correct either. Indoor studio photoshoot has always been a normal thing to do. But the biggest wedding trend is to bring your outdoor photoshoot to some scenic or lomo places, and trendier still - a foreign land where glaciers, trees, seas and sand are considered exquisite and exotic. Many couples has gone the distance to personalized their pre-wedding shoot in some alien country or location, somehow to distinguish themselves from the rest of the pack. NZ, Melbourne, Bali, Taiwan, Korea, Italy, etc. are no longer a dream-come-true but rather an affordable and practical feat for many couples.
I've got my pre-wedding shoot in a distant place (disctant from KL lah) but not a foreign land.We chose this place as to capture pre-wedding photo with my husband because this was where we had our first out-of-KL&Ipoh holiday trip and how we together hike up the hills and took paths that no normal person would do. Regular people will just drive up there, but because we both ain't 'regular people', we walked up miles to get to that scenic site. Albeit the local venue, it was one of my most memorable trip ever. It was our connection to that location. The cooling weather was also one reason I select this location. When you've got cool weather, the whole tedious photoshoot process becomes bearable and pleasurable. My elaborated dress has got no sweat! We brought our own props to personalize our outdoor shoot. On that day, rain clouds are missing (yay!), the sun gave just the right amount of light (to the photographer's delight), the crowd and traffic was forgiving (it was non-peak period, puasa month), and the sunset was amazing!
Baby boomers just like my parents never had such chance to go to a outdoor photoshooting found such trends intimidating and a waste of money. Oh well, how could they understand when their marriage consisted only of 2 studio photos - one with their bodies in it and another with my late grandparents and their....err...tai-kam-che in it. wtf!
Copy-paste, Alt-delete
One of the greatest invention ever(?) is the digital camera. So I thought. Then, came Instagram with various lomo filters. Those already brought great differences between the baby-boomers compared to the present Gen X and Y. We now have many options in photography:
Those times, camera film rolls are expensive and processing them into prints requires at least a week (dark blue room, remember?). Photographers at those times take every shot extremely cautiously so that they don't waste frames. One chance only. Nowadays, photographers go frenzy with the snapping. If don't like...just delete. Actually, if don't like....can Photoshop.
So these Bridal Shop offers you packages that has >100 shots, indoor and outdoor. Plus giving you the option to choose your photos to photoshop before printing them out in albums. They photoshopped out my mole. wth. That's like....travesty ok! I knew my albums would be nicely wrapped and collect dust until one day my grandchildren finds them under the bed or on top of the cupboard and decided to sell them off at a junkyard sale, therefore I didn't splurge on our pre-wedding shoot although we've gotten ourselves a great bargain from this bridal shop in Ipoh.
Any bridal package comes with makeup and hairdo, of course. Make up for the photoshoot was purportedly done unnatural (read: OTT) because in prewedding shoots, the background elements and picturesque scenery may drown your looks. Imagine a leafy tea bush looking nicer than my beautiful face? I can't. So my make up artist (FYI, she's patient and amazing!) put on tonnes of foundation and concealer and spent 3 hours/day mainly on my eyes alone - carving out my brows, bringing out my lashes, and reinforced my double eye-lids. Total: 3 hours X 2 days of photoshoot = 6 hours. I had this huge big eyes that even my mum can't recognize me. Plus, you can Photoshop everything, so...imagine the outcome?!
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| Argh, a blurry handphone pic of me. Love this hairdo |
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| One of the 7 dresses. SEVEN! |
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| Getting ready for family shoot |
We've gotten ourselves an award-winning photographer for my actual wedding day and night (Read: mahal giler). My justification: I tone down on my pre-wedding, but I splurge on my actual day wedding photographer.
Now, if my parents are reading this, they are sure to mutilate me.
One chance to do this in this lifetime. Tell you honestly, I didn't think earlier I would have enjoyed planning my wedding this much . It' ain't going to be a royal, dreamy or a fantasy wedding like Kim Kardashian's. In fact, I don't have a dream wedding in mind since young. But it's good enough for me. Personalized.
