Engagement Photos: Take advantage of your area

Make sure you're in love. If not the pictures will not be good.

Find a Photographer with mad skills

Stephen and I lucked out with our photographer. Yolondo Lupoe is a friend of ours and offered her services for a rockin' low price. She is a professional photographer and we could not be more pleased with her God given talent at capturing the moment.

And in the hours we took to take out pictures I learned some things that really made the photos fun and great.......

Take advantage of where you are.

Ask a more experienced Weigugen (foreigner) where lovely places in the city would be. Maybe gardens, a good hike, art museum, a rooftop garden, fountains, a historic section of town, skate-park or anything that you fancy really.

Grasp onto the Culture

We were'nt too sure about the idea of wearing Korean traditional clothes, it seemed a bit silly, but it ended up being our favorite part of the day. Hanboks are so freeing. I felt beautiful, comfortable and uninhibited. Not to mention they made for fairytale photos.

PLAY

Yolondo was right, the best pictures are often the cheesiest. We went back to our childhood and played sleeping beauty, wrestled, tried acrobatic tricks, danced, ran about, and even did a Korean Drama bit.

Make sure you have a few normal pictures in NATURAL lighting.

You know Mema and Papa will want lovely pictures in western clothing. Make sure you take pictures before 11 in the morning or after 2 in the afternoon. Mid-day the sun is too direct and makes strange shadows under your eyes. Later in the afternoon to early dusk is lovely, especially if you have a location where you can get sunset silhouettes . Everyone expects these pictures, so even though they aren't as fun, they are worth having.

Over-expose/Underexpose

An easy trick to getting a lovely picture is to over-expose just enough to soften all the colors. No photoshop needed, just leave that shutter open. Or the reverse which can make for a different mood and emphasize certain lighted areas.

Just do it....till you're told not to.

In Korea, foreigners really can do whatever they want, at least for a time. Ignorance really is bliss. We jumped a fence to play around this enormous bell which happens to be a signal for air raids....

We had a few looks by passersby, but no one said anything. It also helped that it was secluded up in a small forested area.

JUMP IN

There is a large foutain downtown where tons of people meet up and we thought....maybe we should get some water shots. So although our photographer feared disaster we went ahead, comforting her that we really wanted the neon and possible people in the background.

People love something different

Everyone loved our fountain shots.

It was fun getting wet, if a bit uncomfortable with a crowd forming to watch us jump in and out of the waterfall, but in the end, it produced some great pictures which were often more natural. If you are having fun, it is not difficult to look happy.

Engagement pictures don't always have to have your face in them.

Dance like no one is watching.....seriously....we had quite the crowd. I believe they thought we might be famous and filming a movie.

If you don't have a professional photographer friend, a friend with manual camera skills who has some good facebook albums can still do a legitamate job. Remember, for engagement pictures, really you will probably only use a handful, so if you get over 5 great pictures they did spectacular.

The whole event took most of our day, from 2:30-8:30 and over 800 shots were taken. 400 of which were given to us and we love about 100 of those. So be patient it takes time. Take a lot of photos and get creative.

The other option is to go to a Korean photography studio, but I have yet to experience that, perhaps in another entry....

Most importantly, relax, you're in love so you'll look lovely.

Pick an Inexpensive Date

Yes, January 1, 2011, seems pretty ideal on paper. I mean how sweet is 1/1/11 as your anniversary? But it is not perfect.

Turns out that flights to Korea around this time are, to say the least, expensive.

Our families are scouring the internet and talking to travel agents, comparing prices of going to Japan in November and coming to korea from there, or flying through Shanghai. My mother is exhausting her creativity in figuring out ways to save money. Originally it was thought that my father could use his frequent flyer miles, but as it turns out miles are only good when airlines have little business, not during the peak season (jerks).

So now family is even talking of not coming.....or just complaining. And I understand, I mean $8000 for travel.......that could be quite a wedding in the states, not that I would ever ask for that much.....and yet I am now.

We just don't have the travel time that we would need to have a wedding in the states. When you take into account our travel time (around 2 days each way) and the jet lag recovery at 3 days: that is the wedding and mayyyybe 2 days 'honeymoon' in February Virginia before returning to the Korean daily grind at work with a lovely 3 days of jet lag.....not sounding too fun.

Or maybe we should just quit our jobs and head home.... yes I know I am just being dramatic. I need to give this to the Lord, and trust me, multiple times throughout the day I am praying He takes these issues and takes care of them. I mean He runs the whole world, what is a few plane tickets? He has got this one.

The Lesson

If you want people to come to your wedding, although vacation season seems like a good time because of schools and time off, it is much cheaper in the summer, or off season, like mid-fall or February to early may. This will ensure a minimal financial strain on guests. Unfortunately it is perhaps too late for me....

Step one: Make Korean Friends

I arrived in South Korea on August 2, 2010. Ten days later my boyfriend (Stephen) showed up at my apartment at 7:20 in the morning rudely awaking me with the best birthday present ever: a huge chunk of hard carbon that nicely fits on my left ring finger thanks to sleuth work from my baby sister.

So Stephen and I pretty quickly set to trying to figure out where we will have the wedding, right after chatting with our parents and a few friends about our happy engagement.

There are a few things that we know we need:

1. Our immediate families to be present
2. Spend time with our closest friends
3. Have a wedding date fairly quickly (December or January)
4. Have enough money for a honeymoon

Well, seeing as we are both english teachers at Hagwons (Korean after-school schools) we are a bit limited on vacation time (one week in summer and one week in winter). We searched all sorts of options from Mexico, Florence, the Caman Islands, to going home to Virginia. And we have learned a lot about plane ticket prices.

Most of the options that we explored were places that would be relatively inexpensive to fly to for our family and friends. However we soon found out our winter holiday would be the first week of February and therefore a completely awful time for family and many of our friends to travel from the States.

One day my mother, Stephen's mother, Stephen, my best friend and I all had a very similar idea ......why not have two weddings? One in Korea and one back home after we return for our friends.

So taking it as divine intervention that everyone happened to be thinking the same thing we have decided to have our wedding in Korea.

This of course creates entirely new problems; translation.

Neither Stephen nor I speak Korean worth a darn. This means we are fully dependent on our Korean co-workers and friends.

Stephen's co-teacher Minnie has been very helpful. She took Stephen all around town looking for wedding rings and has taken me around to a wedding hall or two, only to discover it will cost around 1,850,000 won to just hold the ceremony. - That is two tickets to Europe.

We have one more location to check out, a hotel in town; but the free chapel that our church (Hanbit) has offered is sounding pretty good, even if it isn't lovely. The important thing is that we get married, which I am pretty sure can happen anywhere.

So as of now, we have a date, January 1, 2011 at 1 pm. That's right, 1/1/11 at 1. My mother has ordered my wedding dress online.....and I have yet to try it on.....so perhaps soon I will have details on korean tailors- I really hope not though. And I have almost completed our photoshop invites- which will hopefully cut costs.....but where do I find a printer?

I suppose this is another job for some Korean friends!