My Big Fat Guangdong Wedding
Chapter 4. The Wedding Photo Contract
With Spring Festival looming over us, I wanted to get the wedding photo contract finalized. Some of my fiancee’s friends suggested waiting until later, since the studio might go out of business over the holidays. My thought was that I’m VERY pleased with the offer, and wanted to lock it down in case the sales girl didn’t come back after the holidays. I’ve known more than one girl who went to her hometown for the holidays and didn’t come back because her family pushed her into a marriage. I didn’t want to have to redo the whole negotiation process from scratch.
With our lovely daughter in tow, we stopped by our selected studio. My fiancee kept badgering the sales girl for items and upgrades. We’re now getting a lovely gold marriage certificate in a glass frame and also got a free upgrade on the frame on the smallest of the 3 portraits to a much more expensive style. She was about to go for a 3rd photo album, but finally relented when she saw that the sales girl was almost in tears. 
So much wedding stuff to choose from!
Our sales girl wanted 2000 RMB for a deposit. Happily, my fiancee managed to get this knocked down to 1000 RMB. Considering that I only had 1800 in my wallet and won’t get paid again until after we leave for Spring Festival, this was a good thing. Also, the thought of losing 1000 RMB if the wedding photo studio disappears is only half as painful as the thought of losing 2000. 
As a side benefit of bringing our dearest darling daughter with us, we got to take another tour of the studio, this time without a new employee trying to act as my personal shadow. We’ve already begun selecting which sets and outfits would go together best. Since there will be seven different settings, there will be at least one involving the ultimate rarely observed item – me in a suit. The most recent time that this was seen was many years ago when I was best man at a friend’s wedding back in the US. My fiancee also wants at least one or two uses of a white dress as part of the photos shoot.
Once we’re back from Spring Festival, we’ll select a day for the wedding photo shoot and do the final selection of outfits a day or two before.