I have known Justin for about 5 years and was delighted when I got to know that he would be getting married. I had briefly met Yuka, his eventual Japanese bride-to-be at a mutual friend’s wedding that I was photographing over a year ago. When their turn finally came, I was unfortunately unable to photograph their wedding as I was already engaged to cover another wedding that fell on the same day.
Yuka hails from the port city of Yokohama in Japan. While talking to Justin, I found out that after their Singapore wedding, they were going to have a Japan leg of the wedding to celebrate with family and friends in Japan who were unable to attend the one in Singapore. After some discussions, I was happily engaged to cover their Japanese wedding celebration. :)
The wedding in Japan turned out to be an intriguing and wonderful experience. I got to spend some time with the couple and their families a day before the wedding when we all went on an outing to Hakone. The wedding celebratory lunch was an eye opener for me in terms of some of the Japanese customs. The people were very warm and friendly, the food was sumptuous, and the couple looked great!
I have always known Justin to be quite goofy and whacky in his personality. My wife was telling me before I left for Japan, ‘Try to take some “normal” shots of Justin and Yuka. Ones in which he does not have some goofy expression on.” I was thinking to myself that his normal self was equivalent to “goofy”. And since my aim has always been to capture the personality of people in my photographs, I figured I would just continue to photograph what unfolds before me instead of trying to orchestrate or change things. A big surprise for me was how goofy and whacky Yuka turned out to be as well! You can see this in some of the selection of photos I chose to feature above.