Pre-Wedding Photos @France Bridal

Total Cost: $8,508

Breakdown:

Kowloon Tong Studio Package: $5,488

Tux shirt + Girdle: $500

Extra Complicité gown rental: $500

Flowers: $800

White socks: $20

UV/Water Protection for Big Album: $1,200

Products Received/Will Receive on 12 June:

32 touched-up soft-copies

Big album (18 photos + cover)

Small album (14 photos + cover)

"Signature Poster"

x1 Large Canvas Print

x1 Medium Framed Photo

x2 Medium Photo, no frame

x1 Small Framed Photo

Services:

6-7 hours photography

3x Hairdos

1x Makeup

2x Wedding Gowns (one Complicité)

1x Evening Gown

2x Groom's Tuxedo

Review:

Prior to signing up with France Bridal, I had done my research online, and figured out how much pre-wedding photos cost with independent, professional photographers. Although these guys obviously offer a level of originality, flexibility and creativity that the big chain-stores might not, I ultimately found the costs really prohibitive. At the time of my enquiry, pre-wedding photos packages with the following pros cost as follows:

Simon- $28,000

KC- $26,800

MC Photography- $17,800 (gowns not included)

Jonathan Lee- $15,800 (gowns not included)

Alan Mak- $12,800

Wilson Tam- $11,800 (makeup not included)

I don't dispute that these guys would provide excellent pre-wedding photography services. But, as a couple, pre-wedding photos aren't exactly the biggest deal. We wanted a few nice photos to display at our ceremony and for the future grandkids (etc.), but overall, we were willing to do without them. It just seems morally wrong to spend thousands of dollars on photos when kids elsewhere are starving, etc.

But this is Hong Kong, and certain social/familial pressures do exist. So we set ourselves a budget of $6000, and decided to walk around Golden Plaza and Kimberley Street to see what we could find. The cheapest package we found at Golden Plaza was around $4,800, but they would only return 10 photographs to us, or something ridiculous like that. On average, packages were around $6000-8000. Overall, we found the photography offered at Golden Plaza to be somewhat tacky and over-the-top/dramatic. Which is to say, plain hideous.

After the exhausting walk through Golden Plaza, I was somewhat ready to give up on the entire idea of pre-wedding photography, because it seemed like the options were either really expensive photos with the Pros, or cheap-looking photos that weren't even that cheap to begin with. But we decided to press on, and to explore Kimberley Street. There, we walked into a few more "cheap" stores that offered over-dramatic photography, before looking into the option of the big chain stores like Mona Lisa Bridal and France Bridal (they're sister companies).

For me, choosing between the two stores was by simple process of elimination. By this, I mean that the Mona Lisa store eliminated itself as an option. As the Future Husband and I were standing outside Mona Lisa, looking at the catalogues and price lists, we met a hilariously rude salesgirl. Holding a packet of food in one hand, and a stick of food in another, she came out of the store and started talking to us (as she was still eating). She asked us when our wedding date was, and immediately started yelling in Cantonese that there would be no time to get the photos done, but YOU COULD PUT DOWN A DEPOSIT OF $1000 NOW AND I'LL CHECK IF ANY OF OUR PHOTOGRAPHERS ARE FREE.

Tip: Don't ask for a deposit of $1000, before you've even introduced your product.

Tip2: Don't yell at potential customers.

Tip3: Don't eat when you're talking to/yelling at customers. It's really gross watching the food fly out your mouth.

Anyway, that girl was so totally craycray that it made me want to laugh. We excused ourselves really quickly and decided to check out France Bridal (next door) instead.

It was SUCH a wonderful experience. The girl talking to us was called Joyce, and she was incredibly friendly and helpful. Her English was not amazing, but if you're an ABC/CBC type whose Cantonese is good enough to speak to your grandma, or Singaporean like I am, you'll definitely be able to communicate with her because she's very patient, and would repeat herself in simpler/slower Cantonese until you understand everything. If you plan on going to France Bridal at Kimberley Street, definitely ask for her to help you.

I asked about the cheapest package available ($5,488), and she did NOT try to hard-sell any of the more expensive packages to me. Instead, she did an amazing job of offering 10 billion freebies with the package I chose, even though I didn't even ask for any. I don't know if other couples would be offered a deal as good as we were- apparently there was a Wedding Fair going on at the same time, and although we had signed up at the store, she had given me the Wedding Fair offer as well. In any case, she was highly persuasive, and within 5 minutes of talking to her I knew that if we were to take pre-wedding photos at all, it would be with their company.

After we paid our deposit, we were given a log-in and password into their online system, where you get to view the dresses in their collection, and to choose 20 that you'd like to try on. There were hundreds and hundreds of dresses available on their website, and it was slightly exhausting going through the entire collection. However, most of the dresses were very frilly and complicated (typical HK style wedding dresses), and I found myself gravitating towards their Complicité "European style" gowns. I ended up choosing two dresses from this collection, and as their package only offered one for free, had to pay $500 to wear the second one.

The gown fitting was at Kowloon Tong, and the girl who helped me out was called Crystal. She was a very sweet, somewhat soft-spoken girl. She seemed a little shy, but was always smiling, and was very professional and helpful. Again, no hard-selling from her, only strategically placed catalogues on the table while we were waiting. I feel like I got suckered into paying $800 for a flower bouquet because the photos were so pretty; if she had tried to pressure me into ordering a bouquet, I probably would have resisted strongly, but I was so comfortable that instead I was lulled into buying one for the photoshoot. Hahaha.

The day of the photoshoot itself was a lot of fun. My make-up artist Ivy looked at the magazine cut-outs that I showed her, and understood exactly the hairstyles that I wanted. She was very, very efficient, and was very caring and considerate, giving me a cup of water each time I went in to change my hairstyle/do touch-ups. I was slightly annoyed because the makeup looked a little heavy on the day (even though I had emphasised that I wanted a "natural" look), but on hindsight I think she had a better sense of how thick makeup needs to be for photography- it ended up gorgeous on the pictures. My photographer and his assistant were a great team, keeping our energy levels high even though we were all getting exhausted by the end of the day. We've received a few un-touched samples so far, and I'll let them speak for themselves:

Overall, I was very satisfied with my experiences at France Bridal. I wasn't too pleased with how the salesgirl at their Emax outlet (where we went to "choose" our photos) kept trying to convince me to add more pages to the small album, but I realise that by Hong Kong standards, she was very, very restrained. Plus, she got my samples back to me via email very efficiently and as promised.

This service probably isn't for couples who want super-special shots in exotic locations, or for couples who focus on wanting to be "different". But our goal was to get simple, good quality shots for a reasonable price, and that's what we got. Could we have taken cheaper photos by organising a DIY shoot with friends, and by buying dresses off Taobao.com? Or going up to Mainland China? Probably. But we definitely saved ourselves a lot of time and hassle by going to a big chain-store in Hong Kong: everything from choosing the dresses to selecting the final photographs were part of a highly efficient, professional system, and I appreciated that.

On a final note, we still ended up paying $8,500 instead of keeping to our $6000 budget because of unnecessary, additional expenses like the second Complicité dress ($500), buying the bouquet ($800) and water-proofing the album ($1200). For these extra costs I can only blame my own vanity. But the service from their staff was excellent, and the photos turned out beautifully.

Rating: Highly Recommended