王盈方醫師瘋狂之旅 Dr Yvonne Wang's Blabberings

The long awaited vacation has come! I can finally spend a decent amount of time holidays in Taiwan ! Since I don’t know when I will get married, this is a special opportunity for me to take some beautiful artistic photos before I grow old! Furthermore, the old folks in my family are becoming unhealthy and keeps nagging and asking when I will get married, so I’d better let them see how I’ll look like as a bride before their health deteriorates further!

Firstly, I approached a 2^nd hand wedding dress shop in the Zhongshan North Road where they sell each dress (white gown too) for NT 3000 only (Aus dollar approx $100). I’m sure you can’t buy dresses as beautiful and cheap as these in Australia ! These dresses came from wedding photo shooting shops, not from some strange unknown origin. I spend the whole afternoon picking the dresses, and all of them needed some alterations. Dressing and undressing during Taiwan ’s super hot & humid summer time is truly a torture.

Then I started looking around the wedding photo shops nearby and found a shop called Dream Wedding which does artistic photos! Their products seem to emit a certain style, so I decided to give it a try!

http://www.dreamwedding.com.tw/

NT 7800 (=Aus$280), 20 photos, inclusive of 3 dresses, makeup, 3 hairstyles!

On the day of the shoot, the temperature in Taipei was 38o! My mom drove me and my dresses to the Dream Wedding photo shop in her little silver Hyundai (yes, her car has been much downgraded ever since I inherited her car in Australia). Soon, a friendly makeup artist/hair stylist started putting makeup on me. First she used a mixture of foundation and powder, which made my sallow skin light up instantaneously! Then she took a little blade and started cutting at a bandage, cutting it into a double-eyelid tape, and she stuck two tapes on each of my eye! Then she stuck two fake eyelashes onto each of my eye, glued me real lashes with the fake lashes, and drew the eyeliner. Then she asked whether I wanted the eyeshadow to be earth colored or cool coloured, and then told me earth color is more suitable for me because my eyes have a brownish tint rather than black! I didn’t realize there’s a distinction between brown and black in Asian eyes! I thought all Asian eyes are dark brown! After the eye makeup, my eyes became so unexpectedly huge, and she drew my eyebrows so high! I can only say that Taiwan ’s makeup technique is amongst the best in the world and I couldn’t even recognize myself!! Then she used some brown powder to modify my face-shape, put some blush on, and used a very light lipstick on me. The makeup artist told me that she chose to emphasize my eyes, so she has to play down on the lips, because emphasizing more than one facial features can look pretty old fashioned. I still can’t believe that she actually chose my tiny eyes as the emphasis point!

First, I wore the traditional Chinese Chi Pao dress, and took some photos with my hair styled in the dumpling head style. Then I dressed in a “Cosplay” style and realized that I looked extremely scary in pink and blond wigs, and therefore ended up picking a brown wig! Finally, I wore the glorious white gown! This made me realize that a woman still looks the most beautiful in a white gown. However, it was a hard task wearing a wedding gown as I keep stepping on the dress with each step and walked very clumsily. The photographer is pretty humorous and taught me how to pose for the photos. However, many poses are not ergonomically designed and I was really tired by the end of the shoot!

At the end of the photo shoot, I changed into a much lighter blue gown and visited my grandma. Then we rushed to the Chang Kai Shek Memorial Hall to take more photos. The sky turned dark after a few photos. The pedestrians kept staring at me. A little kid looked at me and asked his mother “what’s happening?” and the mother replied “this is a bride!”, I was like… what the *$(#)*$)#! Then I went into the toilet at the Memorial Hall to change into a purple “mermaid dress” and had some night photos taken before going home. When I arrived home, I still couldn’t bear the thought of losing these big beautiful eyes so I continued to take photos before finally retiring to bed after midnight!