I hope you are having a great time with your family members this Chinese New Year, and for those who are not celebrating, hope you are having a good holiday. I want to kick off the dragon year by sharing the wedding of Saw Wen & De Way.

Now, Saw Wen & De Way had come to enquire about our services more than a year before their wedding. At that time, my business was just starting to bloom, and I was stoked that someone wanted to book us that far ahead.

Saw Wen & De Way’s story started 11 years ago while they were still in school, meeting at the sweet ripe age of 16.

That girl in the Calvin & Hobbes t-shirt

De Way: I remember, 3 girls. That was in a tuition class for Bahasa Melayu when I was in Form 4. 3 fine looking girls from SMK Seafield, 1 tall, 1 pretty and 1 nerdy. Fast forward to SPM year, I noticed her. She was generally louder than other students during class, gave opinions when not asked for, irritatingly completed the teacher’s sentences every now and then etc. Oh yes, she wore a Calvin & Hobbes t-shirt to class, just like me.

Saw Wen: De Way was a perpetual sleepy head and seemed like the quiet type. At the beginning, we hardly spoke to each other until form 5. We got to know each other better during our after BM tuition yum cha sessions, went cycling and hung out in a nearby park together with a bunch of friends. As the months went by, I found De Way to be charming and had such “beautiful eyes”. He made me laugh (he still does) and I found myself to be falling for this guy.

De Way: She used to tell her stories when we met at a mamak for drinks after tuition. This went on for a while and it felt normal spending time with a girl, no special feelings I dare say. Then, one fateful rainy evening, I had to send her home with my bicycle, with her holding the umbrella. That was when something felt odd…good but odd. Since that day, I made it a point to accompany her home after our mamak session.

Prom Night

De Way: Fast forward after SPM… one of the most crucial moments in high school – prom night. I knew who I wanted as my partner and this was what I went through to get her agreement. It was during her open house with all our friends present, I deliberately cycled back to her house after all of us left just to ask her. Unsurprisingly (ahem ahem), she agreed. That night, the moon was high and so was I.

And so, prom took place and what set me on the course of having this girl as my wife 11 years later happened that night. We danced towards the end of the night and I asked her if she would be my girlfriend.

Saw Wen: I actually said, “No, I don’t think so.” At that time, I was planning to further my studies overseas and didn’t think that it would work out. Worse still, when De Way said he would wait for me and I had to rub salt into his crushed heart by saying “Ya right!”

De Way:  After breaking my heart into pieces, she crushed it further into atoms, by mocking about my promise to wait. Bah!

Saw Wen: Till today, I am still reminded from time to time how mean I was back then to him.

Two Hands

De Way: We parted ways after that dreadful night, only to meet again in college a month later. We were still on good terms and 1 day she saw me walking with my classmate – a girl.

Saw Wen: I thought this might be his new love interest. Regret was within me and knew I had to do something about it. One night after yum cha, being the gentleman that he was, he offered to send me home. During the ride home, I asked De Way how were things between us and he replied that we were still friends. I needed further confirmation and asked him if he still likes me and he said yes. I said “It takes 2 to clap.” Much to my surprise, the reply I got was “I will take my hand out to clap with you.” It has been 11 years and the rest was history. We have been together ever since. He sang his proposal last year and we got married on 9.10.11.

De Way: At the risk of sounding cliché, the rest is in fact, history. But that was how I met my wife – the one who is loud and opinionated (now not so much already *phew*), who took my heart and crushed it into atoms, who got jealous/upset after seeing me walking with my female classmate, who set me up with her friends’ help and lastly – the nerdy one in the tuition class. Who would have thought? The nerdy one. Hah!

What made this wedding so memorable were the many funny expressions we managed to capture that day. De Way also started learning the saxophone a few months before the wedding day, practiced really hard and performed to hundreds of people that evening. If I was wearing a hat, I would have taken it off as a salute to him!

Reflections…

Saw Wen: Why Stories? We started our wedding preparation early and were looking around for wedding photographers. Don’t quite recall how we tumbled across Stories’ blog and love the rich and vibrant photos which captures the moment and details of the big day. Stories, we truly love the photos captured during our wedding and a BIG thank you goes out to Grace, Johan, Weiming and the entire Stories team! We hope you guys had as much fun as we did! :o)

De Way: Photographically, this is what I have to say – most importantly, what I fancy are photos that are lightly edited. They should look as close as the one out of the camera even after editing. Long story short, Stories was able to provide that feel. Being passionate about photography, I believe the depth of FEEL is larger than the depth of field. And this goes beyond Stories’ photos but also the service by the team as a whole, which is awesome.

In a nutshell, Stories team was able to:

Keep it simple. Make it elegant. Keep it personal. Make it happen. Keep it coming. Make it great!

Credits:

Photographers: Grace, Weiming & Johan
Location: Sime Darby Convention Centre
Wedding Gown: Valerie Fan
Groom’s Attire: Fit & Match
Make Up: Leric Yap
Cake: bejewelled*
Flowers: Weng Hoa
Dinner Entertainment: One Under the Five

Thanks to Stories!

Everything was great on our big day!

Mark, Johan and Diane are really heart-warming. We thought we got to know 3 more friends during our big day!

From the initial arrangement of meeting, Diane has done a really good job in liaising between us and Mark/Johan, rounds and rounds of emails, without complaining. She has done a really really great job too, on the actual day. Especially during the toasting from table to table, She took the initiative and helped us to coordinate.

Johan, he was funny, but serious. The first time we met up with him, it was the discussion on actual day run down. Though it was just a 15-minute discussion, I had strong impression on him, as he took out a pen with angry bird design. Too funny! It doesn’t match with his serious look (He did look serious when we ran through the rundown with both him and Mark).

During the dinner, he told me “Stephy, I am sitting at table … (I couldn’t remember), if you need me, you just hand up and I’ll be right here for you”.. He was simply too thoughtful!! and I wanted to make fun with him by handing up again and again, but i thought i shouldn’t.. LOL

Needless to say. Mark is way too professional! He gave us a lot of suggestion, I wanted to have the original version of “just the way you are” for morning SDE, he recommended me acoustic version which many of my friends told me they fall in love with the it. Mark offerred to take some portraits in the Hilton. But too bad that we did not make it as our schedule was just too tight. But He followed us, to make sure he got the chance to take even just one portrait, be it in the bridal suite, or any single corner.

With all these, they move us.

We were very worried and nervous for the actual day. Allen told me, somehow, he felt a lot more relax after the discussion with Stories, that i had the same feeling too. We are blessed to have Stories with us on our big day.

So, Thank you for your dedication, passion to our day!

Best Regards,

Stephy

So I am glad that we managed to complete this edit, thanks to the ever hardworking Weiming. He shot and edited this video entirely on his own. Amazing work! Thanks Weiming for making me look good in video (though I cringe when I hear my own laughter).

To view the photos from Alvin & Melissa’s shoot at Carcosa, click on this link!

Do let me know what you think of our little video!

Grace and Mark shot our wedding on Langkawi Island in Jan 2011. We found Grace and on the Internet and after seeing some of her work, we knew that we wanted her to shoot our wedding.

Grace was professional from the beginning and even though we were only able to correspond by email, communication was always very clear and we were always on the same page. No hidden costs or unpleasant surprises.

It was Grace’s pro-active approach that really convinced us that we’d made the right decision. I (the groom) had no idea what I was going to ask Grace to shoot when she got here. I had no real ‘vision’ or anything and the bride was flat out in preparation, as brides often are on their wedding day. Grace, however, knew exactly what was doing and basically took off and started shooting, assessing the situation and deciding the best way to do things on the fly. This was really great and I can’t say how relieved I was.

Grace is very dedicated and is not too shy to take control when she needs to in order to get the best shots. This was very much appreciated as we are extremely happy with the results. She and her assistant, Mark, shot non-stop from start to finish. They maintained a high level of energy throughout and clearly enjoy what they do. This is important as it rubs off on everyone present and adds to the occasion.

In short, I have no hesitations in recommending Grace and her company. They are dedicated professionals and really very, very reasonably priced. We live in Japan, and seriously, what you get for 3 or 4 times the price here is very much inferior to what Grace did for us. Very happy.

David and Risa Lee.

You have seen some of the images, now you can see what happened behind the camera! It always feels weird looking at yourself on camera, but I hope that by doing this video, you can catch a glimpse on how we work. At the end of the day, it’s about having fun!

Alright, here’s the behind the scenes video as promised! Do leave us a comment or two about what you think because we LOVE to hear from you!

I can’t believe how things have changed since one year ago. The way I shoot has evolved, and the way I look at light and posing has been refined.

During Amri & Daphne’s wedding, Kee Sitt was with me, and shot some behind the scenes shots of me at work. Somehow, I never had the time to edit it (and never did!). This video was edited by Shu Wan. Thank God for her, otherwise, it might take me another year or so to get this behind the scenes video up! I must say, it is really really difficult to see yourself on video – I get really self-critical… Why are you standing that way? Why is your hair so messy? Stop moving so much! What are you rambling about?

And so, in order to be completely honest with you, here’s me at work – silly quirks and all. Hope you’ll enjoy it!

If you have read the book “The Five Love Languages“, you will understand when I say that my love language is ‘words of affirmation’. Essentially, the book explains that every human being has a different way of expressing and interpreting love. Out of the many ways we express love, the top five ways are categorized as:

1. Words of Affirmation – Hearing words like “I love you” or “You mean the world to me” is really important to you. (Yup, I love to hear people saying nice things about me! Makes me feel loved!) And because words are so important, when you hear words that are insulting or hurtful, it really really hurts.

2. Quality Time – One of my other love languages too (you can have more than one I think, but usually one is more primary than the other). This is when your other half gives you ALL of his attention, and by this I mean, not like having a date with you in a nice restaurant but playing games on his iPhone at the same time. (ahem, Alex, please take note!) Basically, quality time together is really important to you. You enjoy doing things together because you simply love spending time together.

3. Receiving Gifts – It’s when you really appreciate the idea of receiving gifts because you feel loved when the person who gave you the gift went to such effort to give you something. It’s not about materialism but it is about the thought behind it.

4. Acts of Service – This is Alex’s language of love. He feels loved whenever I do things like try to keep the house neat, turn off the heater switch when I get out of the bathroom, or run little errands for him when he doesn’t have time for it. And this is what bugs him the most about our relationship – sometimes I can be a really lazy person! Or it hurts when I make a commitment to do something and then forget about it later (which happens very very frequently due to my forgetful nature!)

5. Physical Touch – It’s not just about physical intimacy, it’s about little acts of touching, like hugs, stroking your cheek, or holding hands… they all communicate the idea of care & concern.

Interestingly enough, the way you show love (your love language) may not be the way your partner feels loved. So, since Alex’s love language is acts of service, no matter how much I tell him, “I love you”, it doesn’t mean as much to him as me picking up the clothes off the rack! To him, it’s when I take time off to do things out of my comfort zone for others (or him) that he feels that I am showing love.

Ok, now that I’ve rambled on enough about love languages, back to the thank you notes! Here’s a card and chocolate that Siva & Sumi gave me last week (the box was just taken out of the fridge when I took this shot).

Pre-Wedding: http://stories.my/engagement-portraits-siva-sumitha/
Wedding: http://stories.my/siva-sumitha-temple-wedding/

And this graphic was created by Ash & Candace! While I was in Krabi shooting their honeymoon, they had taken some shots of Alex and I on the go, and created this little jpg! (actually, it’s not so little, it’s like 4000 pixels wide!) It’s so cool!

Since the text is a little small, I’ve typed it out here:

“It’s our turn now to be photographers!!!! How? Can make it or not?? Lucky the subject matters are good looking. Once again, Ash and I would like to thank you for making our photography sessions so engaging, fun and flexible. Don’t know how but you managed to capture all our moments maybe by some teleportic abilities or having some hidden cameras somewhere, but Man, didn’t we look good that day in the pics! Heh. We deeply appreciate the extra goodies you gave us (Johan and the video snippets) which made our day even more special. To top all of that, the honeymoon crashers folks enjoyed your company in Krabi and had only good things to say about Alex and you. Thanks for being a part of our big day and making it so wonderful. Take care and God bless the small people. =)”

Loads of love,
Candace & Ashley

Pre-wedding: http://stories.my/ashley-candace-in-singapore/
Wedding: http://stories.my/ashley-candaces-wedding/
Honeymoon: http://stories.my/krabi-honeymoon-shoot-of-sorts/

Thank you so much! I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again, I feel lurrrved!!

Click here to view their wedding photos.

Click here instead to watch their wedding highlight video.