You Do Need Bridesmaid If…

1. You plan and prepare your own wedding, meaning you’re going to deal with numbers of things to do, from deciding who to invite to sending the invitation, buying wedding dress, the cake, the bouquet, pick and preparing the flower, the venue and the list goes on. Planning and preparing your own wedding only by your self is not only time and energy consuming, but sometime emotionally draining. You definitely need bridesmaids to assist you doing the tasks, and make sure your bridesmaids know their official job description.
2. Having bridesmaids is part of your family tradition. You seek to continue the family tradition, so why not.
3. There are people in your life you couldn’t imagined getting married without them on your side. If it’s been your dream to have your best friend and closest relatives with you at the altar on your wedding, then you should pick them as your bridesmaids.
4. You have made pinkie promise with your besties to be in each others weddings. You can’t break your promise, can you?
5. The only emotional support you can get during the prewedding days and the wedding days are from your best friends or those who have shown endless support to your relationship with your fiancé.

You Don’t Need Bridesmaids if…

1. It is not part of your culture or family tradition. Bridesmaid tradition is not part of some Asian cultures, so if you do traditional wedding which bridesmaid is not part of the custom, why bother to have one.
2. You want a casual and intimate wedding. Usually in a casual wedding the number of people who attend are limited and you would want your besties and closest relative to be there and just to have fun without worrying doing some tasks during the wedding.
3. You want to save some cash and ditto everyone. Being a bridesmaid means the person will need to spend money on a dress, accessories, travel and accommodation (if the wedding is not at her home based) and the bachelorette weekend. Or if it is on your expenses, it means you have to add the cost on your budget.
4. You use a wedding organizer. The wedding organizer or planner will do everything for you. You just need to sit together with them and your fiancé to decide the flower, invitations, photographer and all other things. Besides, planning a wedding should not only on the bride’s shoulder but also the groom’s.
5. Your family and your fiancé are the best emotional rock for you. The road to the big day can be rocky and emotionally exhausting. If your family and fiancé are the persons where your sanctuary is and they are the shoulders to lean on, they are more than enough.

At the end, best friends are best friends. If even at the end of the day you decided not to have bridesmaid and not requiring them to wear the same dress, they are still there for you giving their best to support you and to rock your wedding.

I believe that every love story is different and it has its own uniqueness. Each brings up color to our life, some has lifted us up while some happened to let us learn how to mend a broken heart and to get back on our feet. We could meet someone on the street, smiled at each other, exchanged a few words and ended up on a date the day after. We could be friend with someone for ages and unable to recognize there has been sparks all along. We could fall in love to our blind date or to a person we have never met in person before. Love happens without notification and it is undeniable.

Back in the early 90s youths were familiar with pen friends. A way of communicating and sharing bunch of stories to other pen friends’ member all over the world. I know a friend who married her pen friend. Then during the mIRC era in the mid 90s. It was all begin with ASL PLS. Beside providing room to talk about specific theme, it was also often that member of a channel organized a meet and greet. mIRC was also used as an online match maker. No real identity only nick name, and everything starts from simple conversation. I wonder how could I fell into endless chat back then.

Today, online relationship is common. Some account might be deceiving, but there are many that showing genuine profile. It is our call whether to showcase our true identity on social media like Facebook or make it private. There are many who found their true love through social media or online dating service.

I started thinking about this topic, finding love online, after a pre wedding photo shoot with a lovely couple. It never crossed my mind that they owe their love story to the internet. During the photo session the couple embraced each other. As a Bali based wedding photographer, it is my task to explore their feeling and captivate the sparks through my lens. I always seek to show the chemistry of a couple in every frame, and to spice each photos with their personal character. I believe love ties different characters and that indescribable feeling a couple have for each other open possibility for two persons to unite in diversity. I saw cupid spreading his magical love powder all over this couple.

My search on google about finding match online has landed me on several pages where people with this particular experience share their stories. Some of them embarrass to open up about meeting their couple online due to bias often happened about online dating. Hence they built stories or simply said they met through mutual friends. While other share their experience regarding the topic as well as providing tips to meet a match on the internet.

From my point of view, it doesn’t matter where and how we meet our life partner. What most important is how we feel about each other and how we accept each other. It is important to feel comfortable and secure to be your self with your couple around. Only then the chemistry builds and love happens. Respecting and caring. It doesn’t matter what people say, this relationship is about you and her/ you and him. Who knows if my love story I told you in the beginning of this writing is the decoy one? The fact is I have a loving wife besides me, and the couple I mentioned were happy together.

**Words by Kartika Dewi

I believe that a family is a bunch of imperfect human beings who love and care for each other. Family is the first thing we have when we were born. Their love keeps us warm and their absurdity colours our life. When we grow up we have episodes where we spend less time with our family. And then we come into a phase when we miss those days in the past.

Embracing the past doesn’t mean that we don’t move forward. I like to look back. Looking at the rearview mirror of life makes me anticipate what come may. Glad or sad, whatever happened in the past are experiences that have shaped us into who we are today. When we flip each page of the photo album, memories flash into our mind and make our heart filled with warmth. This wholehearted feeling might not only be yours, but also another family member. A collection of family pictures is the most precious memento for everyone in the family. 

A family album is the medium to tell the history of the family.  How many of us have ever felt very emotional to lose a bunch of photos kept in hard drive? It was never about the expensive hard disk get bad sector and the need to buy a one. It is always about the all the pictures of the happiness and the sadness, the birthday celebrations, the get together, the weddings, the graduation, and all mesmerizing moments.

As a photographer, I am honoured that some families have chosen me to be part of their family history. I met Cory and (husband) few years ago. I witnessed their most precious moment in life. They were two souls who embrace each other and shower each other with love. When they came back to me for a family photo shoot, I was very enthusiastic. The baby has definitely adding more happiness to the family.

We had great time on the beach. Cory and (husband) gave me a lot of space for creativity. They embrace every expression shown by the baby without hesitant. They gave full support to the cute little princess during the entire photo session. We were surrounded with smiles and laughter. The beautiful sunset was just a bonus. They are already beautiful as they are.

What Cory said:

“Ario is our wedding photographer and we really like his works. His photo works are natural and beautiful. We feel comfortable with him being behind the lens. Our family photo shoot was on the beach because we like beach. And when you live in a big city, all you need is vitamin sea. The photo shoot itself was fast, fun and relax. Ario and team were successful in keeping our baby in a good mood during the shoot.

A good wedding photographer also needs to have an extra clear and calm state of mind, be very careful with our acts and words around the clients, have a proper skill, have a fast decision-making process, have a good photography knowledge, have a wedding sequence knowledge, also good at observing and anticipating the situation. A lot of things happened and happened fast at a wedding. Sometimes things that are out of our wildest predictions. Also mistakes sometimes are unavoidable. A lot of agencies, especially the new ones, often underestimated the wedding industry and its character. Knowing the basics of photography and/or videography alone does not make you able to capture moments at weddings. More often than not, these new agencies will get complaints from the clients. If you wonder why, the answer is simply because they failed to deliver happiness. The wedding is one of the happiest days of their lives. Hopefully the only wedding they will have, so everything has to be perfect. Clients wanted to have their exact moments to be documented and they can bring back the memories whenever they see the pictures or videos; and they probably want to pass them on to generations. Also moments at weddings cannot be repeated. Imagine what happens when photographers miss those important moments.

A broad knowledge of photography is a must (obviously), as important as thinking fast and making a good decision in a very short time. Changes of situation at an event is a common thing, sometimes changes come so fast or too fast. You need to always keep up with the situation. Changes on the rundown of event, or weather, or lighting can happen at a very last minute.

Also remember, at weddings we deal with a lot of people with different characters, and emotions are running high. Miss communications can happen. Our priorities are the brides and the grooms. Even both of them have different ways to channel their emotions. Some of them are very easygoing and communicative, the others can be very tense. We need to set our mood at its best, suppress our ego, get the positive energy flowing, so that we can capture the best of every moment at the wedding.

The other thing you need to pay attention to as a wedding photographer is stamina. There will be a lot of heavy lifting (those equipment are not light), a lot of long walk (some wedding venues are huge), a lot of running around, sometimes with a very little time to catch a breath (or not at all). That is why it is very important to keep a healthy and balanced lifestyle. Our job is not exactly an 8-hour kind, so we need to know how to balance between work and play.

Our goal is only one: to make each and every one of our clients happy. Nothing more satisfactory than to see the smile and happy tears on their faces when they are looking back at the pictures and videos of their weddings. All of the hard work paid off. Mission accomplished. 