In the beginning of August I shot a very special wedding in Danang. Of course, ALL the weddings I shoot are special. But this one will always be a little closer to my heart, as it was the last one I’d shoot as a resident of Vietnam. In Janurary 2011, I will be relocating to Bali, Indonesia, and even though I’ll still be back in Vietnam for assignments every year, it won’t feel quite the same flying in from somewhere else that I call home.
And I couldn’t have hand-picked a better couple to shoot with if I wanted to. Ngoc and Tyler are one of the most fun and friendly couples I’ve had the luck to meet in this line of work. And to make it even tastier, Tyer is a kickass wedding photographer in the Bay Area, so it was great shooting another photographer and talking shop the whole time. We banged out some ideas on the fly together during the portrait shoot, and although you might think it would be stressful having another photographer as a client, it was actually really interesting and a whole lotta fun.
We managed to get in a morning shoot in Hoi An, nice and early before all the shops opened and tourists descended on the old town (read my colleague Aaron Joel Santos’ take on Hoi An). Hoi An is great at that time of day, and you can just wander around and use the simple colors and lines of the old doors and walls to frame your images, before they get cluttered with Coca Cola stands and mannequins wearing garish clothes. It’s hard making a clean frame between 8am and 6pm in Hoi An, and getting up early always pays off.
In the afternoon we reconvened for ceremonies at Ngoc’s family’s home in Danang, and then headed out to a massive wedding hall for a much larger reception for friends and extended families, where we roamed from table to table toasting all the guests, as is Vietnamese custom (see last image below). It’s a great custom, showing respect to every guest that attends the reception, but the one problem is that the bride and groom never get a chance to eat, and after toasting 40-50 tables it can get a little exhausting. At the end of the day, we drove to a little fried chicken place and wolfed down some delicious food after a long day. A beautiful day. A long, beautiful day with wonderful people and amazing food (ask Ngoc and Tyler about the banh my stand in Hoi An. That woman is a sandwich artist!) And a whole lotta humidity. And beer. And on that note…. Một, hai, ba… Yo!
