Chapter 14. It’s all over (except for the honeymoon).

My Big Fat Guangdong Wedding

Chapter 14.  It’s all over (except for the honeymoon )

 

We’d survived all the pre-wedding stuff including 2 days of wedding photo shoots, endless shopping trips, the wedding day itself, and 2 wedding parties the next day.  I’d survived my in-laws hanging around long after the wedding was over.  Still, there was a little bit more wedding aftermath to deal with – we’d paid for a lot of things from the photo studio.

I was beginning to wonder if we’d ever hear back from the wedding studio, but they finally called and said all the stuff was ready.  Last night, we went to collect everything.  I had these nightmare visions of our pictures  covered with random Chinglish words, tacky song lyrics (Right now, in some wedding studio somewhere in China, some innocent couple’s wedding photo album is being defaced with the lyrics to Muskrat Love.  The horror, the horror. ), or other random “artistic” enhancements done to them.

I am happy to report that the liberal application of Klingon-style diplomacy (Terror must be maintained.) worked slightly better than anticipated (perhaps ever so slightly too well).  There were no modifications or additions in the large framed pictures, and not a word of English or Chinglish to be seen in the albums or on any of the other items.  The ONLY changes anywhere were in two pics in the albums where we had requested that flaws on the pictures be fixed.  Beyond that, every stray hair was fully visible.

 

 

For those who’ve never had the joy of having a simple ID photo taken in China, let me fill you in.  After the pic is taken, the person at the photo store will spend anywhere from 10 to 30 minutes using Photoshop or some similar program to edit the pic.  This involves carefully making certain that there’s not a single hair out of place and even can involve fixing up a few minor skin blemishes.  I’m always amazed at the level of effort put into something that’s only going to end up being a tiny little ID photo.

So, now I’ve got big 3 big wedding portraits on the walls, the largest measuring 30 inches high and 40 inches wide, where I can see myself and my darling in very minute detail – and the “artist” decided not to spend even 1 minute to clean up the photos before sending these off for production. 

Still, they all came out pretty good. 

 

 

The reasons for this are 3-fold.

1.  Both of my darlings are absolutely gorgeous!      

2.  Long hair (even when it’s a little messy) on a guy is cool.   At last, I live in a country where most people accept this very obvious fact. 

3.  We had a TON of pics to chose from and dumped all the ones that had really big problems, since we didn’t trust the PhotoShop “artist” to fix them properly.

So, the loot came to:

3 big portrait pics to hang on the wall.
3 photo albums (in their very own shiny gold tone carrying case)
Several smaller pics to go on desks
1 decorative wedding certificate in a clear frame
1 glass block (heart-shaped) picture
6 wallet sized photos
2 glass-block keychain photos

 

 

Getting all that home was fun.  The biggest framed pic barely fit into the back of the taxi.  The 3 framed ones were together in a huge cloth shopping bag.  Guess I’ll only need one shopping back when I go to the grocery store now. 

Plus the stuff already collected – about 300 pics on a disk, the wedding photo DVD, and 2 posters.  Overall, we’re VERY happy with how all the wedding pics and related stuff turned out. 

Now I just have to find a place where I can get more items produced without the HUGE markups the wedding photo studios always build in and with a competent person to clean up the pics beforehand.  Then I could open an art museum just for our wedding pics. 

Other future artistic plans are to get a bunch of us dressed up in traditional outfits and head back out to some of the old buildings in parks around town for our own photo shoots. 

So, the wedding is finally over, the in-laws are gone, and all the stuff from the wedding studio has been collected.

    

All that’s left now is to decide where and when to have the honeymoon. 

 

 <– Back to Chapter 13.          –> Chapter 15. Looking Back.  Wedding Memories.  –>