Taipei’s Ching Hua Bridal Art Studio

by Nadia LeeMar 1, 2016

Before Arriving in Taiwan | Ching Hua Part 1

When I think of Taiwan, I usually think of that saying ‘Made in Taiwan.’ The island country has provided so much to my childhood, making it what it is; from boba, to spicy chicken bits, to I don’t know what else. Suffice it to say, I’ve never been to Taiwan but found a great deal on flights to go, so we went! As with most, if not all of our trips, I was planning this trip to Taiwan to explore their culinary culture, historically, contemporary and beyond.

Taipei’s Closely Kept Ching Hua Bridal Art Secret

Surprisingly JM reminded me of our friends (Christine and Howard) who recently went to Taiwan and spent a day taking professional wedding photos. Having just gotten engaged a few months back (July 2015), he suggested we look into getting some engagement photos done while we were in Taipei too (why didn’t I think of that?). Since timing couldn’t have been better, I couldn’t resist and replied ‘Of course!’

Ching Hua Bridal Art Exterior Signage

Having it suggested to me, sparked my interest to find the right studio to go with. My whole thought around this process was that you can’t just go to any studio to get your once in a lifetime wedding photos done so let me do some research to figure out who would be the best studio to go with since I knew nothing about any studio prior. Initially I figured it would be super easy to find online information; however, as it turned out, looking up Taiwanese photo studios specializing in engagement shoots was not an easy feat, there were so many to look at!

One of my main hurdles in finding the right studio began with the websites of these studios themselves, many of them were often in Taiwanese (not something I can read), though a handful were bilingual. More often that not, we needed Google Chrome to translate them to get a better understanding of the services and packages offered (thank goodness for the translate feature!). After hours of scouring sites, reading forums, scanning news articles about the Taiwan wedding industry, we finally narrowed it down to a select few.

The true test came down to when we emailed them individually and patiently waited for them to email back… or not to email back. A few did email back however there was one that stood out from the rest. After a lot of back and forth email correspondence, we thankfully made the acquaintance of a lovely woman by the name of Chun-Yu who worked at the prestigious Ching Hua Bridal Art Studio.

In an ocean of difficult communication threads, she was a breath of fresh air to my tired ears. She easily communicated with us through emails (in English, yay) and made planning the shoot to coincide with other things we wanted to see/do in Taiwan so seamless. Despite a flight delay hiccup in our original scheduled appointment, Chun-Yu amazingly helped us reschedule our appointment to the next day so we wouldn’t risk being late, or worse yet, missing it entirely.

Ching Hua Bridal Art Wedding Dress on a Pedestal Just Within the Entrance

Ching Hua Bridal Art Wedding Dress Within the Main Lobby Area Taiwan- Day 1: Visiting Ching Hua for the First Time

Walking up to the provided address, I was so surprised to meet a smiling Chun-Yu at the door to Ching Hua Bridal. She graciously welcomed us in to a world of Taiwan bridal photography, something that only a few outside of Taiwan have ever had the pleasure of experiencing. The studio space itself was gorgeous; with a beautiful gown posed artfully in the window and chandeliers hanging from the ceilings.

In Taiwan, for these engagement shoots, as I’ve learned through going through it first hand, it’s essentially a two day process. The first day is all about the bridal dress/dresses selection, groom outfit selection, consultation with photographer and stylist, the final fitting of the dresses and then album selection. Amazingly we did all of this in a span of four hours! I’ll walk you through the process now.

After sitting at one of the front tables, we got a chance to hear more about the process and how the day was going to proceed.
Chun-Yu had shared with us the approximate duration of this first session so we were prepared to spend a good few hours together.
She then ushered us upstairs to an amazing VIP area where I’d have the opportunity to try on dresses they hand selected.

Prior to arriving at the studio, I had thought a lot about what exactly I’d wanted in terms of locations, styles and hair. I shared those ideas with Chun-Yu, hopefully making it easier for her and her team to pull the looks that were along the same lines of what I’d proposed.

When we arrived, she had the printouts of those inspirations in hand with additional notes which made me super excited because it meant we were further along to having my dream photo shoot. We were off to a great start! To read more about the process outfit selection, check out the second post in this four part series.