How to Plan Yourself an Overseas Wedding Photography Session

Pre-Wedding Photography can be just as important as the Actual Day Photography as part of your beautiful memories. Why? Because after a few years or decades has passed, 2 main things remain. One: your wedding bands (rings), and two: your wedding photos. So get good ones for both. I grew up seeing my parents’ studio-shot wedding photo in their bedroom. Somehow it felt meaningful, gazing upon the youthful and loving picture as my parents aged gracefully. When many years have passed, what was served on the dinner menu or how fantastic your shoes were does not matter anymore.

Pre-Wedding Photography is common in Singapore. Charming studio shots and outdoor photography on bounded albums and projected multi-media/montages are usually a highlighted display at wedding dinners and receptions. Couples are increasingly adventurous and creative, wanting their wedding to be extra special and somehow different than others. As Singapore is a small country, guests could expect to see the same outdoor photography locations commonly used. Therefore overseas wedding photography makes an interesting impact for everyone, and has gained popularity in the recent years. Even those pre-wedding photographs taken in Singapore endeavor to look as though they were not taken in Singapore! To meet the demand, “Overseas Wedding Photography Packages” are pieced together by professionals. These can be expensive. With the advent of the age of information technology, you may have an alternative.

How to plan an Overseas Wedding Photography Session by yourself:

1. Pray and Research at least 6 months in before the shoot.
This is going to be a lot of work, so if you have more than 6 months, that would be good. Praying together as a couple keeps you focused, and guide your instincts to make a decision. Sure, you would need a fair bit of data collection (whereby google will be your best friend). Still, decision making and hoping that everything will fall into place will take a leap of faith. Another important decision to make is the “theme” of the entire shoot. This will guide your choice of makeup, hairstyle, clothes, flowers, and shooting location.
Left: Fay Wray uploaded by star1950, lead actress of King Kong (1933 film)


Far Left: King Kong(1933 film) taken from Cynthia('s blog).

I decided on a “Urban 1930s” feel, and researched on the art and fashion of that era. It was a time where women had fingerwaves and other glamorous curly hairstyles, King Kong was climbing the Empire State Building… you get the picture. But this is of course just a guide, and I did not follow it strictly so that I don’t look too dated.

2. Decide on location and duration of your overseas trip.
Apply for leave, book air tickets and accommodation. At least 2 weeks would be good, so that you can narrow down to the day with the best forecasted weather nearer to the shoot. It’s also good to have time before and after the shoot to relax. Try to find something with little or no cancellation fees, or try to reserve and give payment at the latest date possible.

My hubby and I chose NYC, as it was meaningful to us, and it fulfilled our theme because much of the Manhattan landscape today existed in the 1930s.

3. Decide on what to wear, to rent or buy.
Using your theme, decide on what you and your husband are going to wear. You could rent a gown from Singapore and bring it over but this will surely rack up your bill. I bought two gowns from other Singaporeans and had them altered to my size, and it costs me less than $400 in total. I made sure the style was versatile enough so that I can look different on my wedding day. Decide on your shoes and other thematic accessories (such as a hat, or clip-on suspenders).

4. Decide on your hairstyle and makeup artist
To follow my theme, it was essential to me that my hair and makeup artist was skilled in doing something from the “1930s”. I chose Matt Yeandle because he has experience in doing fingerwaves, as seen in his sample portfolio online. He was a very skilled professional, providing hair and makeup support to film, TV and print, and did a lot of work on my hair for me. Confirm a few available dates and times with your hair and makeup artist, so that you can offer estimated times to the photographer.
Far Left: Top view of my hair

Left: Side view of my hair

5. Decide on your photographer
There are much more photography portfolios online than there are portfolios for hair and makeup artists. So you may find yourself with too many choices! The best way to decide who to choose is to communicate with them via email. Tell them your theme ideas, and budget, and see what their artistic ideas and suggestions of locations are (since they probably know the area/country better than you do). It’s easy to choose the one that matches your needs most by communicating with them. I chose Willi Wong Photography as I found them to be a good match, and I am thankful that I did. I love their work, and my experience with them was enjoyable.

6. Decide on your bouquet
You could get a fresh bouquet few days before the shoot, but that would add to your things to do when you arrive. I surfed online but did not find a picture of a fresh bouquet that I liked. I was also worried that the flowers would wilt/crush/damage before and during the shoot. Silk flowers were my answer, and they were re-usable as bouquets for my bridesmaids on my actual wedding day. Make sure you choose silk flowers that look as real as possible! Afloral.com was good with that, and a number of relatives and my mother mistook my bridesmaids’ bouquets to be real. You can see us in the picture below. Only my bouquet was real, and it wilt terribly towards the night.

Actual Wedding Day Photograph by Adam L.

I wrapped the stem differently with ribbons and other accessories. The one taken in NYC was wrapped with shiny red ribbon, pearls, and I randomly stuffed red petals and red feathers amongst the flowers. (You will later see that this same bouquet was used again in Ithaca, wrapped in blue flowing ribbons.)









7. Adapt to final changes/ improvements.
Check the weather, confirm the appointed date and time with your stylist and photographer, make any last minute purchases if you find something that does not match or fit. Make sure your handphone is fully charged and have mobile reception. Bring along tissue, blotters and lipstick. Flat shoes/sandals is a MUST. You can’t walk around in heels all day and still produce a fresh smile for the camera.
Above: Me changing from my Birkenstocks into my stilettos.

Left: Us taking public transport.




Draft your route plan (map out your destinations) for the day, and consult your photographer. This will of course change again during the shoot, so you’ll just have to go with the artistic flow and be flexible. In NYC it was better for us to travel via public transport, whereas in Ithaca the car was an important transportation mode for us. If your photographer knows the area well, you could leave the destinations to him, but if he doesn’t know the area well, you have to map it out on your own using whatever you can find on the internet, if you have no time to recce the area out yourself prior to the shoot.

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I hope that the above steps would help you achieve beautiful and less costly overseas pre-wedding photography. I later repeated all those steps to have another photo shoot in Cornell University in Ithaca, upstate New York. As you can see in the photos below, it is the same white gown in a new “Garden Fairytale” theme. I did my own hair, re-ribboned the same white bouquet and hired an upstate photographer, Michelle Neumayer. I chose her because I love her artistic style. Very dreamy and beautiful.

Things cost less in the suburbs than in the city, but that’s the same for everything else including real estate and food right? If you’re looking for more high end services (especially for makeup), the city provides better. Not because those in the suburbs are no good, but because there is alot more competition and variety in the city to suit your needs. My makeup artist in Ithaca had never done makeup for Asians before, and she also had no idea how to put on false eyelashes for me. Sometimes she messed up and had to re-do my eye makeup a few times. Almost everyone in the salon had to chip in to help with the false eyelashes.

Buying a second hand gown, wrapping your own re-usable silk bouquet, hiring local hair and makeup artists and photographers rather than flying them over from Singapore cuts down expenses. Staying at a smaller hotel, renting a place, or staying with a relative/friend also helps. Less urban locations and services are cheaper. Do your own hair (or even makeup) if you have the skills. To cut down costs further, you could also opt not to print the photos or create an album. Just keep the softcopies, make montages or online photo albums. A professionally made hard cover album can cost several hundreds, and you can always create them later on after the wedding when you can afford it.

Wishing you Peace & Love.

Even with technology, it still feels far away

Last week, my mum and I skyped for the first time. Sure it was nice seeing her. She looked pretty as always in my eyes, as if time has not changed much. Seeing my very young niece still being very attached to my mom, (my mom helps care for my niece with my brother and sister in law are at work) brings me back to the time I was in a high rise home, looking out of the window at my clean and green island country. Skyping with mom was not so fun though. It required too much Internet savvy-ness which was was a bit too tough for mom to handle.

My little niece is able to talk and sing a lot more now, proving that time in Singapore has moved on without me. I have another niece born recently, and soon I'll have another nephew in a few months time. My close secondary school friend has gotten married while I'm away, and I miss my best friend (of almost a decade) very much. She's the one I reflect with the most before the creation of this blog. Of course I now have my husband to remain accountable to, and the rest of my reflections are now contained electronically to a voluntary audience whom I may or may not know. It would not be surprising that with the natural occurrence of time, best friends can fade out into normal friends.

Still, I am thankful for technology, because it has increased communication accessibility for long distance relationships. Long distance telephone calls are been much cheaper in recent years. Using an Internet phonecard, I spend less than a dollar per hour when I call Singapore. 018 from Starhub allows my family to call me at local rates too. Social networking websites like Facebook are especially useful to know what your friends are up to.

My brother also bought my mom an itouch, so that we can correspond via emails. Steadily my mom learnt how to use it, and progressed from email messages that looked like abbreviated SMSes, to really impressive letter writings. I am so proud of her.

But still, why... Why do I feel so far away? This is the feeling I get recently. I did not feel this way when I first moved here, naively thinking that with up to date communication, it is easy to keep up. And with so much to do and appreciate in America, we would have much to talk about. However we do not call each other as often as if I were in Singapore although the calling rates are so cheap. Perhaps the misconception of phone calls being expensive is still stuck in our minds?

So why do I feel so far away? It is because relationships are more than just about "keeping up with the news" of your friends and family. I miss just being beside you. I miss enjoying the night breeze with you as we share heart felt thoughts. I miss being of service to you, helping out whenever I can, or having us check on each other to make sure all is well. I'm sad when I miss once-in-a-lifetime events. I miss the relationships that we have built after so long, after going through so much, and I do not think I would find such a relationship here in NYC so soon. Nevertheless, Thank God for Love.

NYC's Doughnut Plant

This will probably be one of many food entries I’ll be posting up soon. So look out for them!

I’m not a doughnut fan, but via some e-letters with my cousin (many thanks!), I figured that I ought to try some famous ones since I’m in NYC. He asked about this shop that he saw on television with the black sign board outside it. It’s supposedly “Famous" with branches in Korea. Wow. If there are doughnuts famous enough to get TV air time in the tiny island of Singapore, I should try some! Hee. ;-D

As one of my friends gave me and my husband a book ‘Time Out 1000 Things to Do in New York (Time Out Guides) (Paperback)’ before we left Singapore, I remembered reading some thing about doughnuts in there. A quick flip, and there it was on number 975-978! It listed Alpha Donuts (45-16 Queens Blvd, Sunyside, Queens), The Donut Pub (203W 14th St), Doughnut Plant (379 Grand St), and Peter Pan Bakery (727 Manhatten Ave, Brooklyn). Since there were only 2 in Manhatten, a quick google identified Doughnut Plant as the one my cousin was talking about. Mark Israel, the owner of The Doughnut Plant was born into a family who had an affinity with baking for the past 2 generations, and found original recipes for making doughnuts left behind by his grandfather.

The Shop (image from Rob Tallia)

From the outside, it looks ordinary and small. Stepping inside, the area to serve customers is possibly about 12 to 20 sq ft (like 3 by 4, or 4 by 5)? There was some renovation going on inside. I wonder if there’s gonna be some sort of expansion? Maybe an area for customers to hangout? Hahaha…. That would be nice, because currently I have to sit on a bench or stand outside the shop to munch on a doughnut – luckily I was wearing something warm. The man who served me was chubby and dark-skinned. I can’t tell what his race is though. As I was deliberating what to buy, I decided to ask him for his opinion on the doughnuts. Apparently, he thinks that by telling me which doughnut is nicer, sales of the other doughnuts would be affected. :-/ “You’ve got to buy to try it for yourself lady! It’s just doughnuts, not life insurance! These are top of the line doughnuts!” Well dude, it’s not about the money, I just wanna limit the calories consumed. So fine, I bought 4 doughnuts. The Square peanut-butter glazed with strawberry jam filling, the Valrhona Chocolate, the Blackout, and the Rose Petal Doughnut.

The Doughnuts
I don’t have a picture of the square peanut butter glazed with strawberry jam filling, because I ate it before I reached home – I was hungry! The glaze was too sweet for my liking, but all glazes are like that right? And it’s not peanut-y enough. I’d like a richer peanut butter taste please! The jam was nice, especially when I researched that they make their own fruit jams without preservatives. Health-conscious mah! Hehe. ;-) Btw, they have 2 main types of doughnuts. The yeast type, and the cake type. This square doughnut was the yeast type, costs $2.75, and it is the size of one’s hand.

The Valrhona Chocolate is another example of a yeast type doughnut. You can tell by the taste, and the holes in the doughnut-bread. But once again, I’m not a big fan of the glaze, it’s just too sweet. I’ve read raving reviews of the Valrhona Chocolate, but I really can’t take the sweetness leh. The Valrhona lacked the chocolate-y taste I was hoping for. I probably won’t buy it again. I would guess that this doughnut costs $2.75 too, hand-sized.

The Blackout is a cake-type doughnut. And my, this one is great! It’s like a moist-chocolatey-cake-plus-cookie-crumble, and mine appeared to have some liquid chocolate in it. Not sure if it was chocolate sauce, or just uncooked batter. But it tastes heavenly! It’s sweet of course, but not over whelming like the glazed ones. I loved the richness of the chocolate, and it’s natural mildly bitter taste. Definitely better than the Valrhona Chocolate if you’re a chocolate lover. The Blackout costs $1.75 I think. I think there is the bigger version of it, but I bought the small version (palm sized) because I didn’t want to eat too much.

The Rose Petal Doughnut is a mother’s day special item. This is a glazed cake-type doughnut. And wow, the taste is wonderfully fragrant. It’s weird that what I tasted is “fragrance” but it’s true. When I take a bite of it, I smell roses. As mentioned previously, I don’t really like glazes (like the Peanut Butter glazed and the Valrhona Chocolate) because it just tastes like a coat of sugar, but this one is good because of the roses. And yeah I might buy it again. My guess is that it is $2.50. A larger sized one would probably cost $3.50.

Pros
- Their cake-type doughnuts are very well made! I think this is where they excel!
- According to their website, all doughnuts are trans-fat free, preservative free, and contain no eggs and no artificial flavorings. All glazes are made with fresh fruit and fresh roasted nuts! Now that’s something notable.
- Doughnuts I’ve seen are usually glazed at the top half. But in Doughnut Plant, it seems that most doughnuts are covered on both sides. A cashew nut doughnut has glaze and cashew nut bits on both sides.
Cons
- Their yeast-type doughnuts are similar to most doughnuts I’ve eaten, not special.
- The glaze is too sweet for my liking.
- These doughnuts are much pricier than any other doughnuts I’ve bought in NYC or in Singapore. Yikes...Other than the cake-type Blackout I’ve tried today, the rest don’t really seem worth it. LOL

All in all, it is highly likely I would not be visiting the Doughnut Plant often, because I’m health conscious and it’s just too much sugar! Unless I have a chocolate craving… the small palm-sized Blackout would be apt.

Get the Daily Groupon

Groupons (= Group + Coupons) utilizes collective buying power to give great bargains to consumers, and gives a "guaranteed" minimum volume of customers to the participating merchant. And the deals seem to be pretty nice! Take a look at this:

Groupon from The Point on Vimeo.

Today's groupon was for a classy french restaurant where you pay $20 for a $50 bill, groupon open for 1 year. The minimum needed for this restaurant Le Périgord was 20 people, and by 2.30pm there were already 70+ people who bought the coupon. There were other interesting deals as well such as a 50% off to watch NBA Chicargo Bulls groupon last year. 20 people signed up so i guess the NBA groupon may not have worked out as 25 people were needed. Of course sometimes, nobody bought the groupon at all...there was one groupon I saw that said $45 for an accupuncture session (U.P. $100), and nobody bought it... ;-) Here's a screenshot of some groupons, not all are located in NYC.

So I've signed up for the mailing list at http://groupon.thepoint.com/new-york/. If I use any of the bargains, I'll tell you how it went. Hey if you're around here, you should sign up too. ;-D

Hainanese Beef Noodles Dry Version

In my hubby’s first efforts to learn how to cook bak chor mee a few weeks ago, he bought a packet of frozen beef balls, and used very little of it. I can’t leave the beef balls in the freezer forever. And I don’t know when my husband’s cooking forays will start again; he’s been so busy at work lately. So it’s up to me to do something about it.

Hubby helped in finding me an online guide on Chef2Chef Culinary Portal: Singapore Signature Dishes http://forums.chef2chef.net/viewtopic.php?t=287257, and the recipes were posted by a chef/cooking teacher. Many thanks to you, kitchencapers! I could not comment on the forum nor send you a message because I did not want to join as a forum member. Surely there are many others like me who appreciate your recipes, because all your original pictures and recipes look simply delicious! I would recommend it to anyone! ^_^

I could not abide by the recipe fully as I don’t have all the stuff needed. So here’s an account of what I did. Enjoy!

Ingredients
Part A:
~250g beef, club sandwich type. (I would have bought more if I realised earlier it was all I had left!)
2 large onions, it looks like A LOT because America’s onions are huge.
0.5 cup Dark Soya Sauce
0.5 cup Light Soya Sauce
2 cinnamon sticks
0 aniseeds (I couldn’t find them in the markets here. *pout*)
11 cloves
Part B:
1 Napa lettuce leaf sliced (yep, just some random veges in my fridge)
1 leek leaf sliced (too bad I don’t have bean sprouts!)
5 frozen beefballs
Dried Kway Teow

Method:

Soup:
1. In a medium sized pot ( I don’t have a large one because I usually cook for 2), I put 0.4 to 0.5 gallons of Poland Spring bottled water. This is because I have not bought a water filter yet.
2. When the water is boiling and bubbling, I added in ingredients from Part A.
3. Partially cover the pot and cook over low heat for 2 hours.

To make the dry version sauce:
Here’s what I did, and hopefully it can be helpful to others trying to thicken their recipe.
1. Put 3 cups of the soup’s liquid into a smaller sauce pot for a boil.
2. In a small bowl, mix 1 tablespoon of water, 2 tablespoons of soup and 3 tablespoons of potato starch into a “paste”.
3. Turn the heat off the boiling soup, stir in the “paste”, a bit at a time. Stop when you deem fit.
I used all the paste, but you use less (or more) if the thickness is good enough for you. Remember, the sauce will thicken more when it cools! At salt to your taste. I didn’t add any.
To serve:
Cook ingredients from Part B in boiling water. Arrange nicely before adding sauce. I garnished with some homegrown spring onions to replace the Chinese parsley. Yep I grow spring onions in a container at home! Hee hee!
To “ta pao” (a.k.a. to pack away in a lunch box for hubby to bring to office):
1. Mix olive oil with the veges, so that it stays fresh-green when he opens it hours later.
2. Mix olive oil with the boiled kway teow and add bits of spring onions, so that it doesn’t adhere to eachother when it cools.
3. Position the kway teow, veges, beef balls, beef meat and onions into his lunch container. Close.
4. Pour the dry version sauce into another smaller container. Close.
5. Paste a Post-it “love note” onto his lunch box before putting them into his bag. ;-)

Hair Modelling for Free Styling Products

There is something that occurs in New York City that is amazing. And I don't think it occurs with as much frequency, quality and generosity in Singapore/Asia. This amazing thing I am referring to is... BARGAIN OPPORTUNITIES. And not just regular bargains, I mean super-bargains! Like up to 95% off the price of high-end designer stuff (I usually don't buy branded stuff, but when it is 85% off or more, it gets consideration. And the quality and cut is usually splendid!). There are also warehouse clubs where you can find fresh produce and electronics etc., factory outlets, as well as free stuff and services!

So here is an example of my adventure yesterday:

So I responded to the ad, and on the other line of the call was a friendly lady, who told me the details. I made my way down to the salon on the Upper East Side with the address she gave me. And wow, I found the area to be quite posh when I stepped out of the Metro Station. After walking down 3 streets, I found the Salon just off Lexington Avenue. It was a beautiful Salon, and quite large, occupying 3 storeys. I was sent up to the second storey where I became a hair model for a styling class.

My stylist was G. She was an african-american woman, medium built and a very curvy figure, and had a sweet voice and demeanour. There were 3 other stylists practicing together with G, and the instructor (whom G refers to as a superb stylist) was a thin and petite caucasian woman with a brunette bob called S.

G who had some years of experience of working in a boutique and a hair salon was a well educated woman originally from South America. She has a degree in Political Science, but admits that her first love is fashion. So she took up this 2-2.5 year apprenticeship, so that she can travel world, work a few days of the week, and get well paid. This Salon frequently sends stylists to support the fashion shows in Paris, to work on the models' hair.

So for today, the instructor S required them to do 2 styles. The first was a blow-back style. This was an important basic requirement - the starting palete - before doing other upward combing hairstyles like french twists and buns. The most important part of it is that every root direction has sculpted universally towards the back, such that there is no visible parting in the hair. This is more work then it sounds, and when S spots any imperfection, she points it out to G, explains it and G worked on my hair again until the goal is reached.

The second style was a flat-ironed, center-parted, no volume hair style. Another basic to achieve as a starting point for creating runway hair styles. G was able to achieve this in no time. She was telling me that she worked with all sorts of challenging hair types, and by now she can handle a poodle that comes in and needs to blow it's hair straight out. Lol!

At the end of the day G fulfilled her 2 assignments on my hair before 5.30pm. She went the extra mile in giving me what I requested: soft curls to my hair, as I wanted to go home and surprise hubby (it did not pan out in the end because when I had a hot steamy bath, all the curls fell straight! *sob*). I also collected my FREE three full-sized quality styling products. One for prepping, one for holding, and one for shine. Sweet! G also gave me several free samples as I requested stuff for dry hair ends.

Stuff like these, like free haircuts, free dental, happens often in New York City, because there are many apprentices come here to learn from the "Best". There are just so many talented people all over the world, and I hear that many of them congregate in New York City. You just have to be lucky enough to catch these bargains at the right place, at the right time, and sign up.

What do you think about bargain hunting in Singapore/ NYC?