(Real) wedding album online

We went to see Luc, our photograph, to get our complete wedding pictures yesterday evening. We enjoyed our discussion as usual with him - perhaps a bit too much for my husband - that in the end I had to drag him out of Luc's appartment.

Luc had already passed us about 30 or so "sample" pictures he took on our wedding day and so we knew what we were waiting for. I had so much fun looking at them and trying to pick our best shots - there are a few hundreds of them to be sorted out and they are all so georgeous that we had a hard time - that we went to sleep very late, we just did not see the time pass.

I have just put them online and shared with our friends, already reclaiming for it for the past 2 weeks.

Sample

Waiting for our wedding pictures for almost three weeks was becoming unbearable. We called Luc last Saturday morning to wake him up a bit and he asked us to wait until mid-week. He did send me a "sample" - I thought that samples were only given in perfume shops - album today with (only) about 35 photos in it. It is worth the wait, they are all breathtakingly beautiful!

I put it online and I got some mails right away. Everyone is charmed by our "sample" album and just can not wait to see the rest.

Photos donation

Our wedding is still very recent - not even a week old - but yet I feel a sort of longing to go back and live that day once again. Everything happened so fast and I am affraid to miss some seconds of the beautiful day. I wish that Luc could have done the pictures faster but I know that we would not have our pictures ready before 2 or 3 weeks time since he told us that he is booked full until July 14th and even then we are not his only clients waiting for his pictures.

My parents got very impatient. They have their flight back to Indonesia on July 16th and never in the world would they accept to go back empty-handed without our pictures.

God bless our friends who kindly sent us their best shots since the last couple of days, even without us asking them to. We ordered a print for my parents - so they give us some peace since they will have it in a day or two - and we set up a shared album online. That would help the wait.

Wedding photograph

We met Luc again and signed a contract with him this evening. So that was it, we had then our wedding photograph for both the Paris and Alsatian wedding ceremonies.

First hectic week

Monday - I figured out that it was about time to find musicians for our wedding receptions. We spent the whole evening scanning through DNA - Alsatian leading newspaper - ads hoping to find some decent local musicians. We wanted something of a easy listening jazzy atmosphere but looks like we have to compromise with what was available. By the end of the evening, we managed to make a first contact with a potentially real group of musicians.

Then I spent the rest of the week searching for a real photograph "worth the occasion". Knowing now how difficult it is to find a good photograph, not to mention two photographs, I changed my strategy to get one willing to cover our two separate ceremonies: the civil wedding registry in Paris and the Church ceremony - along with the receptions - in Wickersheim.

I found this great website of wedding journalist photograph association which is exactly what we were looking for. We hate unnatural looks on posed pictures. They even put estimated prices so we do not waste time contacting those outside of our budget. I contacted two of them working in France : Franck Aulnette and Fanny Dion. Mrs Dion responded almost right away but unfortunately she is not available for the date while Mr Aulnette was taking a bit of time.

Meanwhile I continued looking up for a photograph and by accident I found this website. I fell instantly in love with his works! I showed it to my future husband in the evening and he agreed right away to fix an appointment.

Friday - We met the photograph. For a second time, after my wedding dress, our instinct worked well. The guy, Luc, matched perfectly to the one we had been looking for! He was very passionated by what he did, with a good sense of humour without being too much, and of approximately our age. It was like having a friend for our photograph wedding. We booked him up a that same evening.

Saturday - We went to Dancourt, a wedding stationnery provider, to make up our mind on the choice of stationnery. They have a very nice website but I still find it important to feel the touch of their papers, their printing, ... The feel can make a difference. We picked this model for ours.

Civil wedding in two months

Our civil wedding registry date was out - April 12th, 2008 - that left me two months to plan the whole thing. There were only our witnesses and my family-in-law but I saw it as an occasion for an intimate celebration and I would not have missed a second of it.

Photograph - First thing I looked for was a photograph worth the occasion. We had a bunch of photograph pubs - french slang for publicity messages - since the day the City Hall put our civil wedding registry announcement on their wall. After inspecting them thoroughly, we decided to meet this photograph who did not really excite us but he sounded the least worst than the rest over the phone.

True that I had quite an expectation for a "photograph worth the occasion" - myself being for a moment a freelance photograph during my university study to get some pocket-money ending up in expensive materials for architectural maquettes - but this one was quite awful. He seemed in the least interested in our wedding since it would "just" be a simple civil registry taking a short half day and this was equal to half a day unprofitable for him. Then he talked and talked and talked about costs while pushing us to buy optional packages. We found out later that it was not him doing the photos, he would simply send one of his photographs - there I had the impression of going to a work agency to hire a cleaning lady. I was so relieved when the appointment was over and we politely said goodbye while promising to give a firm respon se within a week.

Marriage contract - Both of us come from a traditional family where divorce is not an acceptable solution. Mine living in 3rd world Indonesia and his living in France. The latter is quite surprising knowing that half of marriages in France end up in a divorce. However, we were not so blinded by romance to ever think of a happily ever after 'til death do us part - see how my husband-to-be made his contemporary proposal to me.

After deciding that we were not perfect, we went to sign our contract at our lawyer's office in Alsatia who was kind enough to accept our appointment on Saturday morning.