In the spirit of sharing more reviews, here’s the review of all the services that I engaged and what I think of their services for my wedding that just took place.
Pre-Wedding Bridal Shoot(Blue Bay Wedding)
Verdict: Highly recommended if you care about a great experience.
Taiwan-based, Mandarin-speaking most of the time but they are capable of understanding English, most of our e-mail exchanges were done in English and Chinese. Not advisable to use them if you don’t know any Chinese at all though since most of their documents are in Chinese.
Language issue aside, their service is top-notch. As with most Taiwanese, they were very friendly and meticulous (attention to details by the makeup artist was impressive according to my wife). I care a lot about customer service and at no time did I feel unhappy at all about anything.
As this was the first time they came to Alishan for photo shoot, they even volunteered to fetch us to and fro the mountain so we can take casual shots as they did their photography framing, which saved us a lot of troubles with transport (the mountain is relatively inaccessible when you have a lot of luggage). They did provide a lot of other values that weren’t mentioned in the package we signed up for.
Ultimately they are slightly pricier and while some of the experiences we got was certainly due to the fact that this was their first time visiting a new site, IMO the entire process and the final output were very satisfying and definitely worth the money if you want to have a good time.
Photo-booth (The Loco Team)
Full disclosure: we engaged the team at a discounted rate.
Verdict: Will not recommend.
When they were finally ready, it was pretty good. According to eye-witnesses, the crew had very good attitude and tried attracting people to have their photos taken with the many props they provided.
However, they arrived at the scene approximately 1 hour later than they were supposed to. If I recall correctly, their reason was that the unloading bay that they always use was blocked and they had to look for other places to unload. While I understand that events like this happen, I wouldn’t recommend them for the following reason:
- they did not contact any of us to inform us they will be late;
- they did not plan for contingencies.
As a compensation, they did fulfill the agreed-upon duration (by ending late) but since the golden timing for photo-booth session would be before the actual banquet starts (i.e. during the cocktail session), they blew it. Not all 2 hours are equal. I am not impressed.
They did a lot of right things as a photo-booth vendor but as they were late for an once-in-a-lifetime event, I would not risk engaging them again or recommend them in good faith at all to anyone unless the event is not time-sensitive.
Transport Rental (WeddingCarz)
Verdict: Highly recommended if the car you want is available in his inventory.
If you can look past their highly dubious website, I assure you they actually provide a very good service. I think it is entirely managed by one person, Abel, but do not let that fool you, his responses will be prompt, so much so that I remember being skeptical if the entity behind the texts was a human or a robot.
We rented shuttle buses and bridal car from him and we had no issue with him at all, consistently reliable throughout the day. Very approachable guy (and by my standard, I mean it).
Actual Day Videography(YoyoStudio Videograph)
Verdict: Highly recommended. The video-grapher (Ames) we had was very friendly and professional, your mileage may vary.
We could not vouch for the rest of the company because right from the start we were already liaising with Ames directly. Met him once before the actual day to inform him of our possible timeline for the day and he was very straight-forward about over-time payment and kept us updated of the possible over-time towards the end of the actual day so there was no surprises.
Throughout the day, he provided continuous feedback about what to expect and we were pretty happy with the final video output (and the raw footage he shot throughout the entire day) and I really enjoyed working with him. It was a budget video-graphy house but the service certainly did not remind me of that.
Actual Day Gown Rental (Thomson Wedding Collection)
Verdict: Recommended.
Although we engaged them for actual day package, they were kind enough to include gown rental for our ROM (which took place way before our actual day). It is really hard to say no to freebies.
The staff member we worked with initially was Helen who was very welcoming and detailed, she took the time to recommend what is in vogue and would be suitable for my wife-to-be instead of simply recommending the latest. It was unfortunate that when our wedding day drew near, she had to be away from work for personal reasons and I hope she is doing well.
The staffs who took over her were pretty approachable (you would think this is a given but let’s not take this for granted) and handled the hand-over pretty well. All in all, pretty satisfying experience.
Actual Day Photography (Thomson Wedding Collection)
Verdict: Recommended if it is part of the actual day package.
Not sure if it is an industry standard to only be connected with the actual photographer one week before the actual day but the only reason we found out was because I visited the shop to find out more. While it is true that we could have asked earlier, it might have been better if the information was volunteered to us before we even had to wonder about it.
The actual day experience was pretty standard, nothing to write home about. I was just glad that everything went on smoothly.
After we collected our photographs (which came in a pretty fanciful thumb drive), we discovered that some of the last 50 photos were corrupted and could not be opened, Jacky (our photographer) was pretty responsive and delivered the affected photos (of around 800MB worth) within the same day (via online transfer). Quite impressive for after-sale service, on a public holiday no less!