A good photographer can make all the difference! They can literally turn nightmares into fairytales, and vice versa. Everyone has their own preferred style, so here are some to check out depending on what you like :)
After settling your wedding date and venue, the next two vendors you should confirm as soon as possible are actually your Actual Day photographer and videographer. The reason is that they really are two of the most important hires you will make. After the fireworks fade, all your memories of that day will be from them! Also, popular photographers tend to be booked quite early (up to 1 year in advance) so you should book early too, especially if your wedding is during popular periods like December or dates like 08/08.
Our photographer/Why the Photographer Matters
Express highlights done in less than a day (video quality reduced to fit Wix's requirements)
I am really particular about photography, so I spent quite long searching for a photographer I liked. I would go to the company's Facebook/Instagram pages for a quick overview of their style and quality. When it came to our photographer Arture's, I scrolled through all his Facebook photos right to the end because I liked the pictures so much and wanted to see more and more. That's how I knew I found our one.
Arture was slightly pricier and I did keep looking around. But it still came back to his photos. Shin is their main photographer, and he always does all the shoots himself. He kindly agreed to an hourly rate so we started later (i.e. miss the usual makeup shots which I don't really need anyway) and paid for as many hours as we needed. Hiring Arture also turned out to be one of the best decisions in light of what happened with our decor. Long story short, the colour theme was horribly messed up. This is what the arch actually looked like on the day:
colour of the flowers doesn't match colour scheme (compared with the aisle decor which did)
my photographer turning nightmares into fairytales
After our wedding ceremony, I was really upset about the decor mess-up because I thought it had ruined all our photos and video. However, when I received the express photos from Arture the next day, I was blown away and amazed by the job he did! With his colour edits, even the ugly arch flowers seemed to match the colour scheme. It looked so dreamy and pretty that my mother-in-law said one of the guests called it a fairytale photo. And for myself, I felt so comforted and happy whenever I saw the photos. My photographer saved the part of my wedding that I hated the most.
Another comparison photo I like to show is this. The right is what my ringbox actually looked like, and left is what Arture gave me. We did have real flowers, but it didn't fit as nicely into the ringbox and I wasn't too particular about this aspect. With his attention to detail, Shin also managed to capture every table's framed 'couple story' that I made. I did mention for him to capture more photos of the decor, but didn't expect him to take the front and back of every frame I made! Happy to know that my effort wasn't wasted ^^
If you like this bright and dreamy style, go ahead and hire Arture. Most of the photos I've used for my posts are by him, and you can see more of his photos under point 2 here. I've heard stories of couples regretting their photographer/videographer, having to pay more to hire a new one just before the wedding, having a wonderful wedding day but receiving photos that looked like they were taken on camera phones etc. Once the wedding is over, you won't have a chance to re-create those memories and you won't have another occasion where you gather all your friends and relatives for such a big celebration. It's ok not to spend tons of $$$ on the photographer, but do save yourself the heartache and find a credible one that you like!
Different Styles of Photographers
Budget
Oolphoto
Cepheus Chan
Withminn
Yikeshu Studios
Bright & Warm:
Chris Chang
Juxtapose Pix
Happyphotopeople
Fun/Quirky:
Androidinboots
Knotties Frame
Artistic
Andri Tei
Dreamy
Arture
White tones
Chris Ling
Antelope studios
A Merry Moment
Moody/The Feels
Caline Ng
Bloc Memoire
$$$
Multifolds
Lightedpixels
Bobby Kiran
Disclaimer that I of course haven't tried all of these photographers, so it's just based on what I can see of their styles through their media platforms. Do read up more on their reviews and search their name + dayre to see if other brides have used them before. I also asked for rates and met with some of them. Cepheus Chan is a pretty nice guy and his photos are not bad! He's still relatively new to the industry which is why his rates are quite reasonable, but they may have increased since I met him last year. I met with Chris Chang as well, because even though he is out of our budget, he was having a promotion for photoshoots. He was really warm and friendly (like his photos haha), and even advising us on the locations etc even though we hadn't made a decision whether to commit to him. I've also read lots of good reviews on him.
Of those that we worked with, we hired Oolphoto for our Day 2 wedding. You can see some of the photos from this post on our wedding venues. We also did local photoshoots with Withminn and Happyphotopeople which I'll blog about separately, so stay tuned for that post!
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