Pre-Wedding Shoot

by Errolyn

The day of 8 Jan 09 dawns bright and cheery. I get up off the bed, having had no real sleep the night before. My heart is pounding and pretty soon I am going to feel nauseous! The skin is not much better after the facial, but I go ahead and take someone's advice to apply a hydrating mask. It's supposed to facilitate the adherence of makeup to my face. Then after washing it off, I still think my skin is too dry, so I slap on some Lancome serum.

I put on a peasant blouse and corduroy skirt and tell Ju Han I can't understand why I am so nervous. I confess that I feel that if I don't do today perfectly, that it would be a great disaster. Ju Han carries the big black duffel bag I had stuffed the night before with Awie Awana and Senor Amore - the soft toys we are going to use in our photoshoot and all my shoes to match my gowns as well as my FreeBra (adhesive laden so I can look glamorous in my backless gowns), biscuits, bottles of water and god only knows what else…..Sorry - 2 bags actually.

I wait for Ju Han to ready himself. He takes 1 hour. I am discomfited and fidgety downstairs with Uncle and Auntie Tan, trying to look sane while Uncle Tan tells me about buying car tires and batteries for good prices.

Finally, we head out to SS2 and I want to have nasi lemak. After finishing one packet, I chastise myself for having finished the whole thing. Ju Han is 3 times my size and I eat the same amount he does….hmmmmm….he promises me he will still love me even if I were 200kg big. He may not WANT me though but that's another matter altogether - so he says.....

We reach Bridal Concept at 10am where the make up artiste - Jess is waiting for us. No cheery smiles or greetings, just up the stairs and in the chair. She does my eyebrows and cleans my face. She doesn't speak until I ask her if she's worked there long. That's the last thing I need eh, an unfriendly face? She warms up after a while but this is what I remember. But she does do a great face and hair.

I had 2 wedding gowns, 2 evening gowns and 1 traditional kwa to shoot and the good thing is that we were the only couple that day. Half way through make up Ah Dee the photographer walks in and makes some noise in the room…..she seems fun. She keeps up this demeanour until almost near the end the day…..I guess, where almost everyone is tired and grumpy.

After I'm done, Ju Han gets his turn in the chair and is very excited to report that Jess shaped his rather lion-like eyebrows. He comes out in his first suit and I am shaky in the knees. At our fitting the weekend before I had seen him in the suits but damn! does he look good!

I go to the next room and have a word with Ah Dee about the kinds of pics we like. We tell her we HATE the juvenile overly dramatic poses where I catch an invisible butterfly or punch my man……instead loving the candid shots capturing our love and silhouette shots too. Ah Dee starts with me alone - there will be loads of this to come I realise and then introduces Ju Han into the shots. She asks me to pull Ju Han's ear and I immediately realise she didn't understand our instructions? Or, more likely, she doesn't think they are overly dramatic and juvenile. We do a few of these throughout the whole photoshoot until near the end where we both drew the line at Ju Han conducting music….hahahahhahaha……

We actually went through our photoshots very fast. We probably started shooting around 11am and finished 3 costume and hair changes by 1pm. We treated everyone to Domino's pizza and left for our outdoor shots in Putrajaya at almost 2pm. Ah Dee said that we had to get there early because recently there had been a lot of rain everyday in the area in the afternoon. I was concerned that if she usually left for Putrajaya at 4pm, that we actually had less morning shots (leaving 2 hours earlier!!!!) but she said she had already taken 100over shots. Hmmmm…..I was unconvinced.

Thankfully, we had Bright.Hot.Sunny weather in Putrajaya and a blast at going around - there was a lot of walking and a little posing. I hope we get enough good pictures of nature and architecture that I wanted. We originally wanted to go to the Heritage Station Hotel but decided that Putrajaya was more versatile. Come to think of it, we could have gone to the Hotel if not for the feeling of being very rushed to get back to the shop and wrap up shooting. This is one thing I didn't understand. I guess the photographer could have been very tired and bored with Putrajaya already, having been there so many times but I expected different.

Well, as Ju Han consoles me - she works on commission too and would be all the better off if we wanted to buy more pictures off her, so it's not the quantity that counts, it's the quality and it would be in her best interest to do the most she could to entice us to buy…..All in all, we apparently took 200-300 shots - we should be able to find 55 that we like for the albums. I just hope our pictures don't look too generic. And Ju Han looked so good that I wanna buy everything with him in it!

The darling was such a trooper too - driving and trudging around in the hot hot sun and picking off love grass from his pant legs….. which an observant photographer would have caught on camera.

He brought along a jacket and some new shirts - a great decision cos they looked fantastic. I only hope the camera was able to capture it all.

For myself, I only hope I don't look fat.

All in all, we finished off at 6.30pm. We didn't get to take our sunset pictures because we weren't in Putrajaya that long. Oh ya, it POURED the moment we finished taking our last shot! Someone had a four leaf clover in their shoe!

It was really nice but still I am left with the distinct unease that we were rushed through our shooting and I am very worried that we won't have enough nice shots to choose from. Pity! We were having such a good time with Bridal Concept……

Now I just wanna see my pics, get the album done and MOVE ON!!!!! I hope they're fast and do quality work! This is the real test isn't it?!