Pre-wedding Photoshoot locations

We spent a lot of effort for our pre-wedding photoshoot locations. Once in a lifetime, can't be too shabby about it since we spent so much on the album. We didn't want a storyline, we just wanted the shoot to feel like love, fun, happiness and reflect us. So we decided we didn't want a studio shoot which we felt look dated.

As we didn't have a car, we opted to rent the mini-bus from rico-a-mona bridal at $35/hour (price was as at Oct11). I think the price has increased to $45/hour now.

Botanical Gardens
Before the day of the shoot, we checked out Botanical Gardens as we saw many couples who went there for pretty shoots and I love greenery in photos. It was nice but we also got bitten alot by mosquitoes and sand flies. We felt the only place worth really shooting was the patch of greenery place that looked like an overseas picnic locaton, the 2 popular canopy shelters and the Halia restaurant area which looks like a hidden heaven. Other than that, the place fell short of our expectations. Furthermore, we weren't really big fans of nature, so perhaps that's why this location didn't really clicked with us.

Photos are from my iPhone 4S.

Then we visited Dempsey Hill which was nearby Botanical Gardens, the yuppies area. Jones the Grocer was our top pick coz they had everything we liked - coffee, food, casual restaurant setting that felt relaxing, meats/drinks section like a supermarket and a huge bookshelf filled with colorful books. I love the bookshelves look and he loves the cookbooks. We loved dining out and food was a major component in our relationship esp. given his background as a chef, so a restaurant like this definitely felt right too. We paid $100 just to have the photo shoot here. But it was all worth it.

Culina was nice too with the cold sections to shop around but a bit too cramped for photoshoot. Ben & Jerry looks nice but a little too dark. I couldn't really figure out how possible the angles to shoot the place but since we liked the colorful van and cows and location was just next to Jones the Grocer, it was a matter of convenience that we pick there too.

We loved staying home and hanging out with each other. Chat, watch movies on DVD and cook up simple dinners on weekends.So home was a place that felt like 'us'. But our own house wasn't ready yet. So the direct option was IKEA Tampines. It was very spacious with many more showrooms than Alexandra. We recce the place and found a few very nice spots, so IKEA was definitely in our list. The manager was so friendly too. We asked for permission for the shoot and they gave us a not so crowded timing at 11am.

It was easy to narrow our choices coz we wanted to shoot at places that felt like us. True enough, we didn't really pick outdoor locations besides Marina Barrage. We went there once and it was windy, people were flying kites and the green grass and sky were perfect for photoshoot. The other places that didn't work out were:

Kinokuniya - they only allowed photoshoot on their off-peak hours, which was 10-11am. 10am is not quite possible as I will only start my makeup at 8 or 9am. Any earlier meant I had to pay for the makeup-artist to work extra hours and bring him along to locations which cost another $300 or so. Not making it to kino was also another reason why we were willing to pay $100 for Jones the Grocer, coz of the bookshelves.

Marketplace at Paragon - a place we frequent whenever we are at orchard, they have a wonderful variety of veggies, herbs, bright colored fruits and meats. A place we both liked and looks perfect for photos. But unfortunately the company do not allow photoshoot at marketplace. They will only allow selected Cold Storage outlets which were more deserted and thus lessen the disturbances to patrons if we were to do our photoshoot. So this was out - we didn't want other supermarkets.

Given the rejections and trying to fit the locations into our schedule, so we decided the final photoshoot locations:
1. IKEA Tampines
2. Jones the Grocer Dempsey Hill
3. Ben & Jerry Dempsey Hill
4. Marina Barrage

We didn't use a lot of props coz the places we went to had many things going on in the background, it didn't need much props to spice the photos up. Barrage was meant to be scenic, very bridal and reflect more romance, so just the gown, suit and balloons were perfect.

A couple of other nice locations to share:
- Children's little museum
- Rider's cafe
- Coastal Settlement
- Spruce
- Fullhouse restaurant
- Balzac brasserie
- Carpenters and Cook
- The Plain Cafe

There are many more nice cafes, I read ladyironchef to get inspirations for food and they are usually bistros and restaurants with a nice decor.

rico-a-mona bridal

I'm seriously a procrastinator. Our wedding is over coming to 2 months now and I am just re-starting to blog about it.

Budget & Choices
La Belle Couture
The first bridal we checked out was La Belle Couture on Tanjong Pagar stretch. No special reason why, only because couple of their gowns caught my eye when I browsed through magazines. But we found the range too little, price were competitive with rico, photos too little, they are not very flexi in giving more photos, photography wasn't nice even though they showcased it on the iPad and we had no affinity with the salesperson. So we left it at that.

Z Wedding was another bridal that I was extremely keen in but the bad reviews I read online scares me so much I didn't even want to try. I heard their package is really costly too, going over $5k. Definitely out of my budget.

rico-a-mona bridal
We chose to check out rico-a-mona bridal partly because di gio gowns ALWAYS catches my eye when I browse wedding magazines. But then there were so many couples around me who were with di gio. I didn't want the 'usual' di gio style of gowns. So I was more interested in rico-a-mona seeing that they have alot of intricate detailing in their gowns. They also offered us a package within our budget probably coz they knew I was going to check out MDW, so without visiting My Dream Wedding (which was in our initial plan), we signed with rico with 35 photos in the $3,488 package. I didn't even nego for any MTM gowns because I have no flair for gowns designing. At the end of the wedding, after exchanging photo frames and small album for extra poses, I got 40 poses in the package and topped up 5 extra photos at $75 each.

My Dream Wedding
Husband do not like MDW partly because he finds they are really so hard-sell when we visited their roadshow, to the extent that he felt they are too blatant in wanting to dig our pockets out than create a happy wedding for us. The other reason is also because I do not like their gowns. Always over the top I felt. But I found their photography not too bad.

Even till now, we were still glad we chose rico-a-mona bridal. They are very flexible and accommodating to our requests. No regrets. They just meant to make it a happy experience for couples. Sometimes they forget things they promised but those were small issues, everyone makes mistakes, so we let it go. Not harping on forgotten promises is important because they have so many couples to attend to. Their follow up is quite good, though we had to ring them up to ask if our photos were ready at times.

Photography
We liked the korean styled photography we saw in one of their showcase albums. The colors were vibrant and editing of the mood was right. The photos layout were also nothing like any other bridal, they were featured like a photobook - neat and structured layouts, not the overlapping styles of conventional bridal studios. End of the day, we input our own ideas and we were proud of the outcome and we had many great feedback about the pre-wedding album from our friends on the wedding day!


Gowns & Suits
I loved my day/evening gowns and his suits. They had slim and stylish Korean blazers. Very cute. My husband is slim and tall so the korean-styled suits fitted him to a T without making him look awkward in a western suit. However, they do not have skinny fit pants, most were quite baggy and thus didn't look that good. So he wore his own. They also have tuxedos and western suits for grooms to choose from. Overall, selection isn't a lot but they have a good variety of styles and colours - grey, dark blue, black, hot pink, yellow etc.

Wedding Album

I felt pretty compelled to share something which seems overlooked and no one ever mentioned it from all the forum posts I read.

I went to select my pre-wedding album layout for the 2nd round today. The designer was ok, edited the pictures to my liking as much as possible. The pictures were alright I supposed since I didn't really take my photoshoot with a theme in mind. The theme was 'us'. So photos turned out very us as well.

What comes after photo, layout and all those editing is of course the photo album and the wedding portrait. We were told to pick our huge photo frame, which the husband picked out this white frame with victorian sketchy gold paint prints on the sides. Pretty grand looking I thought, though I would have chosen a dark frame to contrast the sunset photo if it was me but well, the husband is quite particular about some stuffs.

Next comes the highlight which is the wedding album cover! Something which I asked the coordinators umpteen times and they just told me not to worry about it, I'll get to choose it after my photos are settled. But I kept thinking about it at the back of my mind because I didn't like what I saw at the bridal studio sample albums. They were all heavy plastic/acrylic with tiny photos and huge bridal studio logos stamped/plated on the album cover. There were about 20-30 covers for us to choose from, not varying much from:

1) single photo on cover, with bridal logo on the cover
2) multiple photos on cover, with bridal logo on the cover
3) plain white/black cover in textured fabric/synthetic leather, with 3D floral patterned plastic strip across and bridal logo on the cover

I thought the sample albums we saw had all those logos because they were supposed to be advertising tools for them while they showed it off to customers. But why would my own wedding album have to bear the bridal studio logo plastered on it instead of our own names or monogram? In my personal opinion, any item plastered with a company brand on it cheapens the value of the item. This album is paid for and included in the package, not a free gift from the bridal studio. I asked to remove the logos, designer told me not possible, which I think it's because the covers are all ready-made by the factory.

After repeated suggestions which I didn't like, the designer finally said if I wanted plain I could choose something from a range of synthetic leathers with different textured prints and he assured it will be plain but they couldn't do any embossing or printing either coz their supplier had problems with that in the past. I was almost back to my usual happy self at this point as this was obviously what we preferred. We picked out a black woven leather for the cover (think bottega woven) which looks rather classy.

End of the day, I left a happy bride knowing we managed to pick a leather cover. I am really anal about the photos and album as I think this is the whole purpose why we bother paying $4K+ to rent gowns, take the photoshoot, engage their pg, top up extra photos, go through the editing and layouts review, print the album with them. It is not the most expensive package but $4k is a lot to me. Doesn't make sense to spoil everything by having an album I want to just stash it away.

End of day, I got my wish. I had a nice black woven leather album with a metal plate on the front cover. The stainless steel plate was customized with our names on it at Bras Basah Complex.