trial and error

On Saturday I had my hair and makeup trial for the wedding. Chicky was fabulously patient and waited while I had myself beautified. :-) Knowing in advance that this would be a great opportunity to test out some picture poses. I asked one of my cowoker photography friends to come out and do some prewedding pictures for us. I managed to squish myself into Kim Anh's gorgeous wedding dress. This was quite the feat and if it wasn't for Chicky's excellent wedding-dress-lace-up skills, I don't think we would have been so successful.

After a couple of hours primping and prepping at the salon, everything was done and it was time to meet Mikie. He was coming across on the Seabus so we had 1/2 hour to kill. I was wearing the wedding dress top (as Kim Anh's dress is a 2 piece) with my bright lime green yoga pants. It was quite the site to see. Chicky and I sat downtown in our outifts and gobbled down some Macdonalds. On lookers were curious about us and some even said "congratulations".

We met up with Mikie and walked down an alley in Gastown. Both Mikie and I thought about utilizing Gastown's unique textures and buildings. Plus it's a fun location for "urban" types of photos. I was starting to feel self conscious with having to lug some of wedding stuff through Gastown. The streets were busy with 2 cruise ships docked at Canada Place, a bike race and some kind of prep for a motorcycle show. I don't think my bright lime green pants were helping the cause. :-)

We found an old alley that was deserted and a building with windows. Mikie and I looked at each other and said - "this is perfect". So we dropped our gear. Mikie prepped the camera equipment and I got into the rest of my outfit (the skirt). I kept my pants on underneath as I didn't feel like undressing on the streets. The location that we found was the back alley under the seabus terminal. The skytrain tracks were there and the reflection on the windows were wonderful. At a certain angle you can even see the Canada Place sails in the window reflection. So Mikie had us climb onto the window ledges. This was quite the feat as my outfit made climbing anything challenging. The good thing was that I know Mikie's style and wore flats yesterday. Poor Mikie had to boost Chicky up onto window sill as well. Now - I have to explain that Mikie is built like our Toshiki, but shorter. Ah - these Japanese guys...all so petite! Once onto the window sill - I looked through the pane and said "oh crap!...it's a restaurant!!!". Fully expecting the restaurant manager to come out and give us crap about climbing all over his building - we shot some pics and ran off. A funny moment when there was a bum in the back alley who wished us all the best while we clutched to columns and he ran over to steal an aluminum can near our stuff. We were more worried about him taking off with our purse and gear while we were stuck on the ledge.

The photoshoot was really fun. Mikie's creativity and our willingness to climb all over things made the time go by quickly. The weather was SUPER hot and I think both Mikie and Chicky were sweating through their clothes. I commend the brides that have super hot wedding days. I could barely breathe in that outfit let alone look "natural" in the pics. After 2 hours we called it a day as we had to attend Billy & Kim's wedding and had missed the ceremony part already. I hugged Mikie and thanked him for coming downtown to do this for us. Got out of my big skirt, picked up our gear and ran back to the car in hopes that it wasn't towed (the parking meter had also run out). Mikie sent over one picture by email today - I'll post the rest when he gives me the disk.