He said
I shall put aside my sorry attempt to re-chronicle our Germany trip for a while and talk about another aspect of our (soon to be) married life.
A Wedding is a wonderful occasion.
It is a time when you’ll have random strangers slithering up to you explaining how you could make the most of this once in a lifetime experience, and create some truly unforgettable memories by going through the one simple step of paying them an obscene amount of money.
Anyway, we figured that we would probably need a gown for the wedding (I think it’s obvious that here, by “We”, of course, I meant “She”), so we’ll definitely have to pick a bridal boutique out of the millions on the market.
Through our combined genius-ness, we decided that a bridal fair would be a good place to start looking for potential boutiques. Somehow, through the mist of wedding bliss, we failed to come to the simple realization that a couple with an engagement ring around the ladies’ finger walking through a row of bridal kiosks is like dangling a piece of meat in front of a pack of starving hyenas.
In our defence, we had a good reason for thinking that… We had boogers the size of brains…
We walked from stall to stall, TRYING to look at the portfolios of the studios on show.
“Trying” because at every kiosk, a salesperson will try to lure us for a “quick chit chat” at their stall via the very subtle sales technique of thrusting a brochure in our faces.
If we showed any bit of interest at all, by “any bit of interest”, I mean “not running away at our fastest possible speeds and screaming our heads off”, the sales people will continue thrusting the brochures into our hands and inevitable, make the following points:
1. There is no point comparing the various boutiques as they are already the ones with the best prices and photographers.
2. The other boutiques are run by scums who would not know the blushing bride from a spitting llama.
Being young and naive, we followed one of these sales persons into their kiosks to spend “a few minutes” to look at their collection and listen to their pitch. It was a surreal experience. Because one moment we were sitting down at the kiosk, and the next thing we know, it was it was 2 hours later and we were mentally and physically drained. It is almost like entering a time machine.
We failed miserably the first time round.
But like Sylvester Stallone’s Rocky (or his career), we did not give up that easily.
Armed with this experience, we were better prepared to brave the bridal fair a second time. “The Ultimate Ninja Warrior” has nothing on us. We bravely resisted repeated attempts of brochure thrusts and “just five minutes of your time”s. I was especially proud of the way I smile and resolutely say “No, I know what I am looking for” to almost all the vendors.
But you really have to give it to some of these vendors. They can tell from my stoic face that they were facing some sales resistance, and in the blink of an eye, they redid all their calculations and came up with a brilliant short term strategy… they turned around to the Wife-to-be, and thrusted brochures into her face saying “just five minutes of your time”. We walked by some of these stalls at least 6 times that day and every time they will thrust their brochures into our face saying “just five minutes of your time”. These people had a sales strategy and they are sticking to it!
In all honesty, a bridal fair is really not SUCH a bad place to shop for the essential bridal package. There is a lot of variety and some stalls really do give significant discounts off the their regular packages.
And I suppose the experience would not be as bad if you enjoy the combination of the two fine skills which makes up the pillars of our society… shopping and lying…. Long story short, I secured a package from one of the boutiques using so much false proclamations that I fear the karmic impact on my next 9 lives.
We just went down to the studio for a first gown tryout for the Wife to Be and were quite impressed with their gown collection.
This is also when I found out about the one of the major flaws of the Wife to Be…
A prelude of things to come...
She CANNOT take a decent photo to save her life. I mean… seriously….
Besides not being able to just “smile”, she has to go around striking nonsensical poses in EVERY single photo… kinda reminds me of Calvin…
The worst part about taking a photo for her? I don’t think she is doing it intentionally!
I’ll be like:
“Ok. Taking a photo. Smile… 1, 2….3!”
And she’ll ALWAYS move at “3″.
Proof of this below (check out the simultaneous face and hand movement…)
And if there’s any more doubt… More Calvin comparison
The Wife to Be claimed she grew up from a healthy diet of “Calvin and Hobbes”… (True story: one of her many party tricks is that she is able to easily narrate “what comes next” by flipping through a random “Calvin and Hobbes collection. Impressive feat for a girl who will forget to bring her handphone to work)
Anyway, my point of it all.
Good luck to our wedding photographer. I hope it was worth the money. And I am dying to see how our wedding photos will turn out.
