Chapter 9. The Photo Albums and Other Fun With The Wedding Studio

My Big Fat Guangdong Wedding

Chapter 9.  The Photo Albums and Other Fun With The Wedding Studio

 

We went back to select the pics for the wedding photo albums.  The total was supposed to be 37 out of perhaps 70-100 pics.  There were 335 to chose from, which could be spread across 2 photo albums.

Round 1.  Try to toss the ones that just didn’t work.  The computers at the studio kept freezing every time we’d delete a file.  2 computers, files on network, files on hard drive.  It didn’t matter – delete equaled total lockup.  Instead, I finally figured out I could copy files to a subfolder with no issues.

Round 2.  Quick run through copying out all but the ones we both really wanted to ditch.  That took out about 25%

Interruption for extended bargaining session.  1000 RMB gets us 25 more cleaned up (or so we thought at the time) pics and a 3rd album.

Round 3.  Copy the best pics which had our beautiful daughter  (alone or with either or both of us) and set those up for one album.  This worked well.  Once virtually identical pics and others with flaws were removed, it came to 22 pics.

Round 4-7.  Cut a few more each time and realize we’re NOT going to make it before 10 pm. 

Round 8.  22 pics used up for one album.  Still have to get the remainder down to a total of 40.  Slash and burn time.

Round 9.  “Dump that one!”  “No, I LOVE that one!” (repeat and change roles over and over again). 

Round 10.  “OK, We can keep this one you like if we also keep this one I like.”

Round 11.  “OK, we can dump that one you hate if we also dump the one I hate.”

Round 12.  Cry in unison as we dump so many we both like.  

Finally, it’s done.  62 pics selected.  22 for each of the 3 wedding photo albums (4 dups between albums).

Carefully explain that our albums are to be a 100% “No Chinglish Zone”.  The phrase “Hamburger Love Story” (as appeared in one of my daughter’s birthday photo albums) and the words to the theme song to Titanic will ABSOLUTELY NOT be included anywhere in any of the wedding photo albums.

 

 

Come back one week later to see initial attempts by the resident “artist” to render the pics into the albums.

Random misspelled words irrelevant to the pics.   The dreaded words to “My heart will go on” attempting to crawl into an album under the cover of tiny fonts.   

I was ever so slightly miffed.   

Page by page we explained things to one of the employees.  It was a long list, and wasn’t just about the linguistic abuses.  One of our favorite pictures that they had clearly been instructed to not crop was badly cropped (to save the effort of Photoshopping the water stain).

 

 

Another pic had part of the photographer’s assistant’s jacket visible in the corner and needed some Photoshopping. I noticed that he took no notes.  After the 7th or 8th time I commented on this, he finally wrote some things down.

 

 

Came back again a few days later.  In the previous visit, my darling thought I was being too rigid and should let the “artist” be “artistic”.  This time, she finally began to see the deep flaws in the “artistic vision” as presented and made a bunch of additional changes.  There was also some remaining Chinglish that had somehow been overlooked.  

This time they dragged the “artist” out.  I went through page by page pointing out corrections.  My darling fiancee added her own observations that were less than complimentary of the skill of the so-called artist.  I’m not sure if our artist was about to cry or physically attack us.  At this point I really didn’t care.  All I wanted was 3 albums that looked at least half as nice as the ones the studio shows to potential customers to give an idea of what they were supposed to be capable of, plus, a clear understanding that if you don’t speak English, you should NEVER attempt to write it inside another couple’s wedding album.

The final pages were sent over by QQ instant messaging file transfer.  A few exchanges between my darling and the wedding photo shop got the remaining flaws fixed (I hope).

The wedding poster for the restaurant was also screwed up.  That was easier to fix.

They wanted us to select 4 songs for a DVD that would have all the photos we’d picked.  Both the photo studio and my darling suggested that stupid Titanic theme song. 

(Currently, I’m re-writing it to be a more realistic expression of what really happened between Rose and Jack – East, West, I stole your life vest.  You must die so that I can go on.  Up, Down, it’s you who will drown.  You are dead so that I can go on and on.)  We kept being far too busy to sit down and pick music.

Finally, we ran up against a deadline if we wanted the DVD in time for the wedding.  I’ve had a CD set of traditional Chinese zither music that I’ve never gotten a chance to listen too.  It was still sitting there in the original shrink-wrap.

 

 

I finally unwrapped my Chinese zither CDs and listened to disk 1.  Not too bad, and would fit with the theme we picked for the DVD.  My darling and I skipped through it quickly and selected 4 tracks.  We took the disks to the wedding studio, and they had NO CLUE how to rip songs off a CD.  I had to go home, extract the songs, and let my darling send them over using QQ file transfer.

The poster and DVD should be ready 2 days before the wedding.  Everything else should be back in about a month.

I’ve given VERY clear instructions that there will be NO WRITING IN ANY LANGUAGE on the framed portraits without our explicit consent.  I’m wondering what sort of bizarre caption the “artist” is busy adding to those now.  

 

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