Musings

Grace Tan In For Photographers, Life, Musings, News

Moving on to HD!

It’s a momentous event for Wedding Story. This year, we are making the move to offer HD video to our clients for all wedding film packages. The past few years we have been honing our skills and building our brand. In 2009, we started to expand our wings internationally and we believe that there is more to come in the future! Today, the 4 of us – Kee Sitt, Sharon Koo, Ian and myself will be flying over to Bangladesh to shoot Ali and Farhat’s wedding. Do keep in touch with our travels as we plan to blog frequently while we are there. It will be a week long celebration in the town of Chittagong. Apparently this is where the longest beach in the world is found! Wow!

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The trip to get our new Panasonic AG-HMC 152 cameras is in itself an adventure. Alex and I booked our flight to Singapore on Monday, and on Tuesday evening, we flew over on Tiger Airways to Changi airport. What a coincidence as we bumped into people we knew on the flight! Chris Cheong from Berjaya Hotels and Michael Tang from Concorde were on their way to Singapore for a conference and coincidentally, they sat in front of us on the flight.

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We arrived at 5.30pm on Tuesday, and took the MRT to City Hall where I met Sherine in Starbucks. She wrote to us to enquire about our services, and so we had a short consultation in Singapore that evening. The world is getting smaller!

Then Wang from Sensys came to meet us at the same Starbucks. It looked rather odd to do a transaction in the middle of a busy coffee place!

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Our photo with Wang.

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By 8pm we met a few friends for dinner.

And then by 10.30pm, Ian Chong came to pick us up to go over to his place to stay the night. I forgot to take a nice photo of him and his wife! :(But here are a few pictures of our new camera, fresh out of the box!

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The next morning at 6am, we were already at the airport, to fly back to KL. And what a coincidence, we bumped into another friend Jerrica who was on the same flight! I was also supposed to meet her for a consultation this week in KL. What an exciting 14 hours.

Grace Tan In Life, Musings

A new addition to the family: The 5D Mark2

About 2 weeks ago, I celebrated my 30th birthday. Wow, I feel really old now! My cousin told me that 30 is the new 20, but I know that it’s not entirely true! The occasional backaches I get proves it wrong! Haha.. Well, I had a little party at my sister’s home to celebrate the dawn of a new era. It was nice and personal, with close friends attending the party. Towards the end of the night, I opened all the lovely presents that were given to me, and what a surprise I got when Alex presented me with a 5D Mark 2 in a Nikon coolpix box! :)

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Alex says I have been hounding him for the new 5D for the past few weeks. Eat sleep, talk 5DM2. Do I really do that? *bats eyelashes*. Well I must say that I have an awesome husband, not just for getting the camera, but in everything he does. He is so supportive of me in everything, especially in my business, providing emotional and mental support all the time. I would not be where I am if it weren’t for him.

In Wedding Story, we have a few camps… the Nikon vs Canon camp. :) Not everyone uses the same system, and though it would probably save us a lot of money when we share equipment, it doesn’t really matter at the end of the day. What matters are the shots that come out and the final look of it. Looking forward to all the shoots coming up soon!

Grace Tan In Musings, Tips + Ideas

New Creative Ideas for Wedding Cards

Kelvin and Cathryn are 2 really creative people. Kelvin is a talented musician and heads One Accord Sdn Bhd as the 1a.m. director. 1a.m has come up with a few albums and their style of music is contemporary and fun with meaningful lyrics. Cathryn is a pastor at Eagle Point Covenant Fellowship (ECF). In quite a number of weddings, I have seen Pastor Cat officiating the wedding, or saying grace before meals. But this time, it’s her turn to be married, and walk down the aisle! So Wedding Story is really excited to be a part of such a special wedding this 14th of March 09. We will be filming and photographing this momentous occasion.

It comes with no surprise then, having 2 such creative people come up with an equally interesting wedding invite! Their wedding theme is about God’s grace, and the invite resembles a movie poster.

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Photo credit: Benjamin Foong, Direction: Kareem Koh

As it says on the card (the pic is a bit small):
On the outside, it looks like things are falling apart. On the inside, where God is making new life, not a day goes by without His unfolding grace.

We will be doing a special interview with them soon to incorporate their life story into their wedding video. We love new creative ideas! If you are an engaged couple, come talk to us about your ideas and we are excited to turn it into a reality. Don’t just settle for the normal ways of doing things. Why not create an entire movie campaign for your wedding? Want to create a poster like this? Let’s talk about it!

Grace Tan In Life, Musings

Childhood Montage with a Twist!

Was digging through my old cupboard today and found my pre-wedding video that was done 2 years ago! It was shot and edited by my ex-colleagues and coordinated by my beloved sister. Alex and I conceptualized the idea with my sister. It felt like such a long time ago! It even has snippets from when Alex proposed to me in 2005. *At that time I didn’t know Kee Sitt well, so excuse the home video grainy look! :P*

If any of you are interested in having a video like this done for your wedding day, do call us to have a chat. We’re open to discussing new and interesting ideas that you may have.

Please make sure that you press play then immediately pause for the loading to complete before playing so that it will play smoothly.

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Grace Tan In Musings, Tips + Ideas

Investment of a Lifetime

Whenever I talk to a couple or friends about their upcoming wedding plans, the first thing they usually moan about is the cost of having a wedding. Yeah, no doubt you’ll be spending thousands of dollars on this one occasion, and though I don’t recommend any couples starting off their marriage in debt, I still think that it’s an event worth saving up for.

As one of my clients said to me recently, “It’s the biggest party I’ll ever get to throw in my lifetime! I MUST be interested in it.” He also said most of his friends commented that it’s usually the women who go shopping for vendors, who are interested in who the photographer is, want to plan the little details etc etc. Usually guys are the ones forking out the cash, and leave most of the decision making to their future brides.

His response?

“If I am going to spend that much money on an event, I’d better know where my money goes, and be assured that what I am spending on is worth it.”

How true. Usually when couples come to Wedding Story for a consultation, they need to take some time to think about whether to invest in our services. We don’t hurry a couple to make a decision on the spot because we understand that it is a big decision, and the couple may need time to think through things, move budgets around and talk about it. We even tell our couples to shop around until they are certain about what they want!

So when they return to us a 2nd time, we know that they are keen on our services because they like the quality of our work.

So here are some of our tips on how to manage your finances for your wedding:

1. Talk things through with your fiance and see how much you are willing to spend overall on the wedding. No point having big plans that cannot be achieved financially. Or worse still, arguing over money matters.

2. Start shopping around so that you know the market price for various necessities – eg photography, videography, flowers, gowns, etc. Best to set a realistic budget for each category so that you are not disappointed in the long run.

3. Determine what is your priority for each category. Are you willing to sacrifice RM1000 on the budget for a tailor made gown so that you can hire the photographer of your choice? What are the creative ways to save money? For example, maybe you can think of creative ways to make your own wedding favour instead of buying expensive gifts.

4. Set aside a wedding fund from the moment you are engaged. Better still, have a separate bank account from your normal savings account so that the both of you can bank in a set amount each month. That way, you’ll be forced to save for the wedding. And no withdrawals for any other usage other than wedding expenses!

5. Create a wedding blog or website and share with your friends and family about the kind of gifts they can give you (other than ang pow). Perhaps you might find a rich relative living in the UK who is willing to sponsor your videography costs!

6. Eat Maggi Mee at least three times a week till your big day to save money on normal food expenditure. *Haha, ok we’re kidding on this!*

Alright, if any of you has any other tips to share, do write a comment so that we can all learn from it. Happy shopping!

-Grace-