teresaling photography

As a filler in between photo blog post, I am going to show you my hot picks for some websites that I am frequently visiting. I get inspiration and ideas from all these blogs, plus, it’s usually an interesting read.

It is filled with photographs, so if you are looking for something to read only, this post is not for you.

First up!

Style Me Pretty (http://stylemepretty.com/)

Style Me Pretty is a great site to go to if you are looking to plan your own wedding. It has everything from colour palettes, inspiration boards, DIY projects, photo galleries, etc. While in the process of planning my own wedding, I had a mixture of wants and don’t wants. We have to have a big wedding dinner so small intimate sessions with family and friends was out of the question. I wanted something simple, less of gold and red but still keeping to the traditional chinese customs, but not too much of it.

I came to this site for colours and inspirations from the other brides. Choosing a colour that is different yet readily available is quite tough! My decision for red and aqua came after many many many websites and google images! My bridesmaids can tell you I have swapped colour palettes 3 times before I stuck to this.

What I love about Style Me Pretty is the DIY projects that you can do to enhance your wedding.  I love it when blogs have DIY sections. But I think it drives YC crazy cause every time I see something amazing, I’ll tell him, “Let’s do that! Pfffttt…no problem, piece of cake!”. I think it scares him a little bit. Also, good for those on a budget! I love how I can put our personal touch on the corsages, boutonnieres, the flowers, the invites, the settings.

This website is HIGHLY recommended.

Junebug Weddings (http://junebugweddings.com/)

This is another great site to go to for inspirations.

Junebug has a wide variety of photographers for me to look for inspiration when it comes to photographing a wedding. Sometimes, it’s not to look for ideas. Just looking at the photos makes me happy!! It’s so pretty and really, these photographers are amazing. The things that they can do….wow.  I love the different styles and techniques these photographers use that you know you are not looking at just the same thing over and over again.

If you want to see what other bride and grooms are doing, honeymoon ideas, FAQs (YES! FAQs!), Junebug has ‘em. Just looking at the image gallery will take you some time to finish it!

This is another HIGHLY recommended website when it comes to planning your own wedding.

Malaysian Brides (http://www.malaysiabrides.com/forum/index.php)

This time, it’s something closer to home. Nothing like having a local website that can help you plan your wedding. It’s much easier with planning because then, you know where to go, how much, plan your budget and most importantly, share ideas and get some feedback.

They’ve got a pretty strong community there and they are all friendly and very eager to help you whenever they can. When it comes to local traditional stuff that I need to incorporate into the wedding, I come here for answers. Definitely a plus point when you need to find a local store to buy wedding things. All you need to do is go into the forum and look for them.

There are a lot of discussions from which photographer, which bridal store, make-up artists, which church, what do you do in CMPC (that’s Catholic Marriage Preparation Course), where to get the wedding favours, how much are your cards, etc. It’s a very resourceful website and I love it.

If you are a Malaysian or getting married in Malaysia or just planning a wedding that you want to incorporate something that is close to your roots, I’d recommend Malaysian Brides forum. Absolutely wonderful!

I have tonnes of websites to share still but I only have room for these three at the moment. These three will help you tremendously! I’ll post up some more at a later time.

Have fun planning your wedding and please, share your ideas!

Hello. Meet Rosco.

Small. Cute. Noisy as hell.

I think now is the time I should probably start panicking.

It’s now 52 days until the church ceremony. It’s kinda nerve wrecking.

*Ponders: I hope I don’t trip on my wedding dress.  I have a tendency to even trip bare foot so with heels as high as the sky and a dress as long as the, erm, river (?), it’s not surprising. *touch wood*

And from today until I finish our stack of photos for our “clients”, it’s the battle between Starcraft player (YC) and photo editor (Ling) over the computer. Whoever loses will have to do the dishes and wash the clothes. I’ll probably win. Money is at stake for us when it comes to photos! LOL.

*Sidetrack: Which reminds me, I need to find some singers for the church reception.

hmm.

I should be done with photos for wedding #1 in a week or so! Watch this space!

I thought life would change slightly when I shifted back into the day shift. Clearly I was wrong. I am still busy as a bee! Doesn’t help when you also plan your own wedding. LOL. It really takes up any available time you have left. But I think the final output will be so totally worth it. I am sure it will!

Other than work, we’ve been busy taking pictures! We have two wedding shoots in the last two weeks and it was AWESOME! Both had different criterias. We had a wonderful time on both sets and we learnt much much more in those two shoots.

Another AWESOME thing that happened was meeting Jenny Sun for the first time. And for once, we were in front of the camera. We had Jenny shoot our pre-wedding shots and we had a lovely time with her. She’s so funny and she makes you feel so good along the way that whenever you feel fat even for a tiny bit, her constant, “That’s gorgeous!” comments makes you feel fantastic! Eddie, on the other hand, was simply hilarious! I can’t believe they made us laugh so much. And Joshua was such a great compliment to the both of them. It definitely wouldn’t have been the same if Joshua wasn’t there. We had so much fun with Jenny, Joshua and Eddie. I really can’t wait to see the final output!

**Update: here is a sneak peek from Jenny. CLICK

***Update: Sneak peek on the details we prepared by Eddie! CLICK

That fabulous makeup was by Shinny Ong. That long eyelash…not mine. It’s all Shinny’s doing! And you know everyone loves her when they ask me who did my make up and when I mentioned Shinny’s name, they all said, “OoooOohh, Shinny! WE LOVE HER!”. And really, she’s such a nice talented girl!

Mother nature was good to us too. It didn’t rain before the shoot so the grass was dry enough to lie down. And it didn’t rain when we were shooting BUT it rained right AFTER we got into the car when we were done. Definitely a blessing!

Before I pen off, here is a little sneak peek on the two weddings we shot. Enjoy!

One year ago, this very day, Dexter was still in his weaning process when we decided to take the plunge to get this little cutie. For days, we spent our time thinking of German names and got around town getting all the necessity for a giant dog.

One year later, I hope we brought him up well because he is going to do what a German Shepherd is supposed to do, guard and protect, for the next two weeks.

I met Yen through Alex during my first semester back in Uni. That brief introduction and meet stuck in my mind till this very day. It was before my Christian Fellowship meet and I had bumped into them at the bridge to the library.

Throughout the years, every once in a while, I’ll bump into Yen and she’ll give a very big smile, like friends who have not seen each other for years! You can always expect Yen to always have a smile on her face and never once have I seen her angry. Like the Pastor said on their wedding day, it’s like the sun shinning on a rainy day. That’s what Yen is.

Alex, on the other hand, is a friend I always hang out with from semester one up until today. He is full of emotions and has a very sentimental heart.  The road trips to Genting, the eat out sessions and the gatherings are all fun and laughter. The hardships we all went through was shared and we became good friends. I remember he late night chats on MSN when we were the only two people left in uni on a weekend. Being in a deserted uni on a weekend (or public holiday) is not fun!

We went out on a beautiful January morning to take a few casual shots based on a storyline that Justin has cleverly mapped out. The weather was beautiful and the photo shoot was fun and crazy. I personally had a lot of fun and it was definitely an honour to be able to capture this beautiful moment for Alex and Yen, reliving their memories in uni.

Alex and Yen, all the best in your married life. Quoting the priest at my church, have plenty of kids! God bless you two!

I just gotta say, I love this shot above. It looks like those olden days photo of your dad carrying your mom on his ride back then.

Planning for your own wedding is harder than I thought!

While going through the website for colour inspiration, I came across a few that I thought is quite pretty.

Orange and Green

Picture credit: The Knot

I thought these two colours mix pretty well. It’s a rare colour combination but if used properly, it can be quite beautiful! It’s lovely for the spring season!

Pink and Brown

Picture credit: thingsfestive.blogspot.com (visit site for links to individual sites of each photos)

Pink and brown is pretty cute too. I like the brown fortune cookies on the last row.  The brown colour may not go well with our skin tone, so it’s out for me.

Purple and Red

Photo credit: zenadiadesignscolorpalettes.blogspot.com (Go to site for individual links of each photo)

Purple and red was my initial color theme. Dark purple wasn’t the shade I was going for though. I was leaning towards lavender and red. It’s nice but the colours doesn’t really stand out for me.

Blue and White

Photo credit: thingsfestive.blogspot.com (go to site for individual links)

Blue and white is the most common colour combination at a wedding. It’s very sweet and calm; it sets a nice kind of atmosphere for a wedding. But the overuse of blue can be a bit too much though. I didn’t like how the reception area looks like with the white and blue. But that’s just me!

Black and White

Photo credit: thingsfestive.blogspot.com (go to site for individual links)

And this is the world’s most unwanted colour for a chinese wedding. If possible, a lot of chinese weddings avoid this colour. Black is usually associated with funerals and so on a wedding day, Chinese prefer red because it symbolizes good fortune and joy. However, black and white is pretty elegant.

Hot Pink and Orange

Photo credit: thingsfestive.blogspot.com (go to site for individual links)

Retro look! All we need is lots of flowers and gal power! This is an interesting colour combination. Not many people use it here in Malaysia. Maybe because it the Hot Pinkness that’s the turn off? Whoever uses it is a pretty daring couple! I solute you.

Yellow and White

Photo credit: http://alwaysablogsmaid.com

Yellow is such a bright colour. It makes me happy! Come to think of it, yellow and white will blend in well with a lof of chinese restaurants here. I think yellow goes well with anything.

Red and Aqua

Photo credit: thingsfestive.blogspot.com (go to site for individual links)

Finally, the colour combination I am choosing. It’s a pretty daring colour and I have to plan properly to match everything up. There’s no turning back now though. I’ve already bought my cheong sam material that has these two colours! Rina and I have some pretty cool ideas with what to do so hopefully everything turns out great!!

If you have ideas on what else I can do with these two colours, I am all ears!!

Won’t the girls look pretty in that pale aqua dress?

**This was a rather late post on their wedding. I thought this would be a good anniversary present for the lovely couple!**

We first met the both of them through a friend of ours who said the couple was looking for a photographer for their wedding on the 4th of July. It was so easy to get along with them and we got down to the specifics of the wedding and discussed on what they were looking for in their photographer.

It was a rather scary experience for us. It was our first full day shoot, our first time with a D300 and our first time working totally apart. I took a drive all the way to Kepong and nearly got lost! At 6am! But I whipped out the Google Map and I am fine!! Thank goodness for technology...

I’ve got to say, Eugene and Emily are the most calmest bride and groom I have ever seen. They were so composed and the Heng Tais and the Chee Muis are just so sporting, it made the whole wedding exciting.

I was slightly disappointed with the pictures from this series. I felt we could have done better. The lighting and the white balance was off for quite a few. But we had a couple of good ones too.

I have quite a few photos to post up for this, so enjoy!

Happy early Anniversary, Eugene and Emily!

Hello, welcome to the new and improved teresaling.com!

It’s been 4 years since I’ve changed the layout and I am now going for a more simple and sophisticated look. I obviously didn’t do this template from scratch (obviously!) but I did do a lot of heavy editing. Looks like my years in uni did pay off! So anyways, I nicked this template for free from way2zenith.com and edited it to the way I wanted it to be.

It was a two column template, it didn’t have a drop down menu at the top but it did come installed with the slider, a plus point! The template is, however,  still a little faulty but I’ll fix ‘em along the way.

I stashed my old blog away, somewhere in the depths of this website – readable only by me. It’s 6 years worth of writings and I have a lot of memory stored there. I needed to still keep it in case one day I feel the need to reminisce.

I’ve decided to do a big revamp because this blog is now mostly focused on photography and some of the weddings and shoots that I have the privilege to take. I have SO many photos to show and as I am slowly normalizing my life, I’ll have time to edit and post it up!I have photos from months and months ago, still not looked at or touched. That’s how busy my life is at the moment, a whirlwind of sorts.

Alrighty now, it’s 10pm and I have to wake up at 1am to go to work.

Before I leave, here’s a photo from a shoot that I did for Alex and Yen, which I’ll put up after their wedding this Saturday. Enjoy!