ok, let me preface my post with this - I don’t give a crap about wedding stuff. In fact, I pretty much hate all of it.
That said, I need wedding photos this summer around the hsinchu area and I’ll be damned if I pay 60,000 NT for a set of photos. So what are my options? Am I gonna have to breakout my digital cam and take pictures of us??
/grumbles about the price of weddings
Possibly. However, if it were me, I’d be inclined to ask my wife-to-be what she’d prefer. NT$60,000 sounds like a small price to pay to get things off on the right footing. I’m guessing that she’ll not be terribly happy with digipics taken by one of your buddies to record her happy day. Get that sequinned cream Liberace tuxedo on and smile, boy, SMILE!
[quote=“Cerberus”]ok, let me preface my post with this - I don’t give a crap about wedding stuff. In fact, I pretty much hate all of it.
That said, I need wedding photos this summer around the Hsinchu (Xinzhu) area and I’ll be damned if I pay 60,000 NT for a set of photos. So what are my options? Am I gonna have to breakout my digital cam and take pictures of us??
/grumbles about the price of weddings[/quote]
Not about you. About your woman and her family and their face. Nothing to do but clam up, shell out, and smile, big boy! But you CAN find cheaper photo shops. If she’ll let you.
Hee hee
[quote=“Cerberus”]ok, let me preface my post with this - I don’t give a crap about wedding stuff. In fact, I pretty much hate all of it.
That said, I need wedding photos this summer around the Hsinchu (Xinzhu) area and I’ll be damned if I pay 60,000 NT for a set of photos. So what are my options? Am I gonna have to breakout my digital cam and take pictures of us??
/grumbles about the price of weddings[/quote]
Dude, I hear you… you’re lucky your fiancee liked a wedding company that wants 60k NT… mine liked one and booked one for 73k… but if you think about it, this includes professionally done photos, rental of wedding dress + a couple more, PLUS bridesmaid’s and I think that’s relatively cheap, considering if you get married here in US where you’d have to pay for the wedding dress, etc (I know, it’s bride’s side expense, but eventually, ultimately, you’d end up paying for it one way or another!).
It’s not about you…so tell her to pay for it! 
Yes, this is about you, and her, and the type of life you want to have together. Considering how many guys on Fcom complain about their wife’s being overly mateiralistic and consumed with consumption and not sharing the same values, I’d also say that any woman who couldn’t come to a comprimise over something like this may not be the type of woman as guy who cares nothing at all about wedding stuff should marry.
Those photos cannot in any way be considered a part of wedding culture so they are entirely optional. I got them done because, like my wife, I also wanted some cool shots of us together by a professional. I was only angry about the ridicuous and cheap clothing the studio had and that my wife thought I would ever consider wearing that stuff. As it was, I brought my own.
There are other options. You don’t need to get a fricking 100 photos. Some studios will do a set of 4, or 10, or whatever, including the giant poster that will appear and the entrance to the wedding venue.
We paid half that, and got a dozen or so indoor portrait photos (no outdoor shooting). The main benefits were dress rental (three dresses) for the big night (yes, I looked lovely), a bunch of wallet-sized cards to hand out (I insisted that they not watermark them with the name of the studio), and a HUGE framed / faux oil-painted version of one of them for our bedroom wall. (We never hung it, but framed one of the cards instead.) Oh yeah, and an album for wedding guests to flip through, and digital versions to project as a slide-show.
There’s this great anthropology book called “Framing the Bride,” about Taiwan’s wedding photo industry. You’ll appreciate the whole circus a lot better after reading it!
I joked with my wife that I planned to open a “wedding cookie-box recycling” business, or just to print up boxes myself, and fill them with Dak’s Butter Cookies from the 7-11. The Mrs. was not amused. Of course “conspicious consumption” is the name of the game here.