After more than a year and a half of being engaged, we finally did our engagement photos! We were originally going to take these photos in March earlier this year, however they got postponed due to coronavirus. But better late than never as they say!
Let me tell you about our inspiration behind this photo shoot and a bit about the vendors who helped bring our idea to life!
All photos in this blog post were taken by Shantal from Shantal Marie Creative.
Our Inspiration
As you can see, we definitely thought outside of the box for this engagement photo shoot. We wanted our photos to be really unique and colourful and not like the typical west coast photo shoot on beach or in a forest. Those photos are definitely beautiful, but it’s not really our style.
David found a series of photos on Pinterest where couples were wearing traditional Chinese outfits and posing for photos in their city’s Chinatown or local Asian neighbourhood. We thought this would be a super cool idea to do in downtown Victoria, British Columbia, which is Canada’s oldest Chinatown. Naturally, this was the best place to do our photo shoot!
Our Outfits
Even though Victoria is home to Canada’s oldest Chinatown, there aren’t many retailers where you can buy a traditional Chinese outfits. We picked our outfits from a store called Ochi. The shop is located in Chinatown in Vancouver and they have the most beautiful outfits ever! They were also reasonably priced and were really modern and fun, which is what we were looking for in our outfits.
We actually purchased our outfits more than a year ago and we’re going to wear them on our wedding day for the Chinese tea ceremony. If you watched my previous YouTube video you will know that our wedding has changed due to coronavirus and that David and I are now eloping. Since it’s just the two of us we will not be holding a Chinese tea ceremony as we had originally planned, but we are still super happy that we got to wear our outfits for our engagement photo shoot!
Hair & Make-Up
On the day of our engagement photo shoot, Lillian and Alexa from Artistry by Alexa came over to our house to do my hair and make-up.
Lillian arrived first to do my hair. She did a beautiful half up half down style with a little bun on top and with loose curls throughout the rest of my hair. She did such an amazing job that I wanted to keep my hair like this forever and not take it out after the photo shoot was over! She was also super fast at doing my hair on our photo shoot day. She did the style and under 45 minutes–which was amazing in itself– but also in the fact that it was exactly what I wanted and I didn’t need to adjust anything! Thank you Lillian for the amazing hairstyle that you did– I felt absolutely beautiful!
After Lillian was done, Alexa did my make up. I was going for a glam style that was on the more natural side and I think that Alexa achieved that! I love that she used a airbrushing tool to put on the foundation, which made it absolutely flawless! I also love the colours that she picked out for my eyeshadow and how she blended it together. Alexa also added some false eyelashes and a beautiful red lip to complete my make-up look. Again with my hair and make up done I felt even more beautiful and really confident, which is a good way to feel before you do a photo shoot!
A big thank you to Artistry by Alexa for the amazing hair and make up services that they provided! I’m excited to work with them again as my hair and make up artists for my wedding day!
Our Photographer
After finishing our hair and make up and getting dressed up in her outfits we made her way downtown to meet up with her photographer, Shantal, from Shantal Marie Creative.
Shantal was super excited leading up to the photo shoot, and when she saw us all dressed up she got even more excited to take our photos! She scoped out a few good spots in Fantan Alley and also along Fisgard Street and proceeded to start snapping photos!
She made us feel super comfortable being in front of the camera and striking a pose in the middle of the street with people watching. We were actually having so much fun with her that we didn’t realize that her time had gone by and we had finished up the photo shoot… we could’ve kept going forever!
As you can see, she captured some amazing photos! I really like the combination of the sweet photos that she captured along with the more gangster-style photos as well! Plus, her creative shots were super unique and really gave it that cool Chinatown feel!
Thank you so much Shantal for being our photographer and capturing these amazing photos for us! I love all of them and I am planning on framing a bunch! I can’t wait to work with Shantal again on our upcoming wedding day this fall!
If you want to see some more photos and additional footage from our engagement photo shoot, click on the link below to watch my YouTube video! A big thank you again to Artistry by Alexa and Shantal Marie Creative for doing such an amazing job on this shoot!
DON’T FORGET TO LIKE THIS VIDEO AND SUBSCRIBE TO MY CHANNEL!
