Getting Married in Korea Pt.4 (studio photos)

The next thing on the agenda (and when things for the wedding really started to happen) was our studio photo shoot.  We had already picked the dress shop and photo studio at the wedding planner by briefly flipping through some books.  I did a little research ahead of time, but ended up just going with her recommendations that day.  For the dresses, I chose Atelier Ray, located around Apgujeong Rodeo.  With our package, I got 2 white dresses and a color dress for the photos and then another white dress for the actual wedding day.

We went to the dress store about 2 weeks before the photo shoot to pick the dresses.  At first, I didn't really know exactly what I wanted.  The wedding planner came with us and she knew my personal style is kind of simple so she kept telling the dress helpers that's what I wanted.  I tried on about 4 dresses that weren't so great and they were like..okay, so can you choose now?  I was like, um, no?  So they brought out some more and I picked literally the last 3 dresses I tried on, one ballgown, one lace mermaid, and one strapless silk (all white, no color).



The studio we picked for the simplistic style was 그가사랑하는순간, in Gangnam gu cheong area (doesn't translate well, but they call it "He love moment" I think).  I liked another one that had a lot of outdoor scenes, but our shoot was in February so that probably wouldn't have worked out.  The place we went with has a very simple look where the people are the main subjects of the photos without too much background stuff going on.  Since we were planning on having an outdoor garden style wedding, I thought that would be better to have simple photos for a different look.

We went to the salon in Cheongdam, Avenue Juno at around 11am on the morning of the shoot.  Since it was a Thursday, there weren't many people there and we had very little waiting time.  We probably finished within 2 hours.  The planner and the dress helper came to the salon and helped me put on my first dress.  I don't really understand why this is a thing.  The ballgown I had to wear was tied soo tight and it was just generally uncomfortable to wear.  Of course, when we got to the studio, the couple before us was running behind schedule so I had to wait around in the dress eating gimbap.  I would have much rather changed into the dress at the studio if that had been an option.  I understand wearing the dress to your actual wedding location, but just to the studio, I cannot.

The photographer couldn't speak much English, but he came up with a couple symbols- mainly #1: close mouth smile and #2: teeth smile which was easy enough.  They had basically 20 or so scenes straight from the sample albums that we went through, as well as hanbok shots and lastly, a casual clothes shot.  The studio was basically all one room, utilizing all of the space to maximum capacity so each scene really does look different.  It took probably about 3 and a half hours which was more than enough.  We had heard it could take up to 5 hours.

We went back a couple weeks later to pick the photos we wanted for our album (and also the ones that will be photo shopped).  We decided to pay for all of the unedited photos on a USB for around 350,000 extra which we received on that day.  Our package included a 20 page album, but we ended up choosing around 30 and it was about 30,000 won extra per page.  So we paid more than 600,000 won in unexpected fees.  I'm still not sure if that was the right decision to make..I probably could have done without the extra pages.  We will also be getting one very large framed photo which was ready before the wedding, but we opted not to display it so we haven't picked it up yet.  I think the album will be ready in June so we will probably get both at the same time.