Bridal Dreams
(I wish this was me)
The sisters whom I chat with regularly know that I've got a massive penchant for bridal gowns. It's a once in a lifetime outfit that epitomise elegance and feminine beauty. Call it a fetish if you will, but it is my dream to experience having my bridesmaid lace me into a form fitting gown, feel the delicate lace, satin and silk against my body, the weight of the dress as I glide onto a pedestal, and see a beautiful bride in the full length mirror.
To satisfy my desire, I went shopping on Taobao many years back and actually bought a bridal gown with a mermaid silhouette a number of years back. It's pretty amazing what one can buy from the Taobao and how cheap it was. Including the veil and underskirt, the entire outfit cost me $70. I wasn't too hopeful based on how much I paid and the quality of the fabric did show; the satin and lace were slightly rough to the touch. Nevertheless, the dress did look more impressive than I expected. I still remember myself trembling with excitement on a weekend where my parents were out of town and I had the house to myself. Unfortunately the dress was a lace back style rather than one with a back zipper, and I quickly found out why brides actually need bridesmaids to help them change into their different dresses during wedding banquets. After five tries I eventually did succeed in lacing up the dress, but it wasn't as tightly done as I wish, resulting in a cylindrical silhouette rather a beautiful mermaid I had imagined 😑
(The mermaid silhouette I imagined but was unable to achieve)
I'm not sure how this preference for elegant outfits came about, but it's something I've been desiring for the longest time. Perhaps it was due in part to society's messaging to little girls about being a princess, successful advertising from the wedding industry machine and knowledge that as a guy, it was unlikely that I would get a chance to wear a bridal gown (after all, we crave strongly what we cannot have). I wrote about enjoying gown selection with my wife during my wedding prep in an earlier post, but I think we can all agree that choosing your own outfit is definitely better.
With social media, I found out that this dream might not be too far fetched after all. Many sisters, both local and overseas have gone for bridal photoshoots, to capture them at their most beautiful and immortalise it in photos. Ever since, one of the items in my bucket list is to do a proper bridal photoshoot...with me as the bride. As far as dreams go, it is one that is quite easily fulfilled, as long as I set aside the budget for it and find a suitable, willing (and good) studio.
Unfortunately, as many newly-wed couples can attest to, bridal or pre-wedding photoshoots as it is called, is very expensive to do in Singapore. I did a few casual checks with bridal shops with an indoor studio and the packages quoted were at least $1,500, for 1 gown and a limited number of digital photos. Some shops quoted a minimum package price as high as $3,000+! To be fair, labour in Singapore is quite expensive, and the studios that quote a higher price do appear to have way more elaborate gowns and prettier advertorial photos on their social media page, promising a fantastic and unforgettable experience. But to spend $2k or more on something as frivolous as a wedding photoshoot does make my inner budget concious uncle flinch a lot.
More experienced sisters have recommended me to do my photoshoot in Taiwan instead. Not only do they have a huge number of photography studios in Taipei, the outfits, studio sets and photography style is more varied (e.g. steampunk, 古装, lolita, cutsey gowns, normal bridal styles, etc). Not only that, Taipei is LGBT friendly (some studios explicitly state that guys can crossdress), as well as wallet friendly. I had originally planned to head to Taiwan at the end of 2020 to do a photoshoot, but Covid-19 decided otherwise 😑 Covid-19 please go away soon so that life can go back to normal and we can all enjoy travelling again.
(UPDATE: I've fulfilled my dream! You can read my detailed gushing of the entire experience here!)
1 Comments
Hey Isabelle, nice to see your posting again. Haha, great mind think alike. I recently ordered a 2 in 1 wedding gown to try out. But alas for my elephant size... I totally can't get the zip to zip up to the full extend. Then I realised I underestimated my body size by one size. It is weird to bring it to seamstress correct the size, so I decided to give my current one to another CD friend and ordered one size bigger, hope that I got the size right this time... Haha...
ReplyDeleteI am also writing about dresses and gowns in my latest blog post, but still working on the content, getting a bit lazy to blog these days. Oh well. But back to your idea of a bridal photography studio... I was thinking of converting my storage space into a photography studio to do my own shoot but the space I have is a bit limited. Still looking at a much bigger space for storage rental also converting it into a studio actually. If this ever work out, I will just drop you a DM to see if you will be interested. Cheerz and keep blogging.