Wedding Photo Studios – Introduction

Posted by Jan

May 2, 2008

Many of my friends and relatives have photos taken at studios and outdoors for their wedding albums. They had different style of dresses, makeup and hair for each locations which makes it a lot like a wedding-themed fashion photo shoot. A lot of Taiwanese and Chinese people prefer to use photo studios instead of hiring photographers because the studio packages offer:

rental of a number of different wedding and evening gowns for the photo shoot
rental of a wedding gown and/or additional evening gowns for the day of the wedding
make up and hair design for each gown (for example, if the package includes 3 gowns, you get 3 different designs for makeup and hair)
a big, printed photo album and carrying case (the album size can range from 10″ x 10″ to 24″ x 18″)
1 or more photo enlargement(s)
a bunch of other small items such as signing scroll (where guests can sign when they attend your ceremony/reception) and thank-you cards (I was told it’s a popular item in Taiwan)

You must be thinking, wow, that sounds like a lot of stuff, it must be expensive. Actually, I’ve compared the photo studio prices with other photography place where it only includes the photographers and prints, it worked out cheaper with all the rentals and makeup. Also, I did not see many photographers who actually do “pre-wedding” photos, which are photos taken before you get married. Many brides wouldn’t have their gowns ready 12-8 months before their wedding, which is when pre-wedding photos are usually taken and the photo album will be ready for viewing prior to the actual wedding date.

The pre-wedding and wedding day photo package pricing range from $2,000 to $6,000 +tax, depending on what is included and where the photo shoot take place (for pre-wedding mainly). Most studios are very flexible in working out a package which is suitable to your budget.

As a bride that didn’t want to fork out a lot of dough for a wedding dress which would only be worn for about 14 hours, going to a wedding photo studio was the perfect solution. I wouldn’t need to worry about finding dresses to wear for the reception (if you haven’t heard, a bride can change from 3-5 different gowns during the banquet) or spending time looking for a wedding gown, a photographer and a makeup/hair artist. After deciding that we’d go with a photo studio for wedding pictures, trying to find them online was not as easy as I thought. I Googled several search terms and almost all the links in the results point to some photographer’s website. The only photo studios that did came up which include rentals and everything were Lisange Wedding World and Bello Wedding World. So I’ve turned to Chinese newspapers/magazines and my friends for information.

In the later posts, I’ll share what my experience was like in finding and deciding on a wedding photo studio in Vancouver.

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