Every individual culture of wedding felt like a little exam to wedding photographers. Simply because there are many we need to know upfront and prepare accordingly for the day.
This is especially true for Sunisha and Hung Yii's wedding, it seems like a major examination to me because it's a cross cultural wedding. We have a fun happy Punjabi bride and Chinese groom and the wedding ceremonies of two cultures held on the very same day + some quick portraits to take either. You'll see why I said it's like a major exam to me and probably the couple too.
Typically, Asians have prewedding (Love Diary/bridal portrait) photographs taken before the wedding because the customary would have taken a lot of time from the day and there's a dinner reception to get ready for. So, doing a portrait while feeling totally relaxed is impossible.
The day started with me documenting Sunisha's preparation at 5am, followed by picking up of bride, 'gate crashing games' seen in many Chinese wedding nowadays, Punjabi wedding ceremony at Wadda Gurdwara Sahib in Penang, lunch, transfer images from memory cards, shower & change, quickly head to Rasa Sayang Resort for quick portrait session and then tea ceremony at 5pm and then a dinner reception to follow throughout the night.
It's basically non-stop for me since waking up at 4am in the morning. My watch would give you a rough idea of how's my day has been - a wedding photographer's day at work.
Apart from little space to move around when there are large group of people, doing the express-sameday-slideshow is the most challenging one for me. I have to steal every minute I had in between everything I needed to do to make the show happen during the wedding dinner. The couple opted to show the day through only the photographs. Hah, no pressure at all!
I've picked and edited more than 200 photos as quick I could and added two songs to match the mood I wanted to convey. There's no time for me at all to 'proof watch' the entire show before going to the big screen cause it's already a little behind schedule. A little software glitch that popped up didn't help either. The emcee, Flying Singh helped to create a funny game with the guests to manage the time.
With a huge sigh of relief, here's my submission for the exam..
&.b.t.w. - I have several thumbs-up from the main table showing directly to me. That's all that made these effort worth it even I could only manage to take my dinner near 10pm or despite I am still having sore shoulders and legs as I type.
It's at least 15 hours of solid physical-mental work. But to create something for people who appreciate it is very meaningful and that's, the biggest motivator for me. To keep creating photo diary for people.
&.&.b.t.w. - And for one day, I am Milan Singh!