At a wedding photography exhibition in Hong Kong last year, 29-year-old Emila Ma and her fiance were quite excited as they initialed a contract at a Taiwanese wedding photography company’s booth for a four-day trip for their photo shoot.
Increasing numbers of young couples abroad are choosing to come to Taiwan to shoot their wedding photographs due to the nation’s spectacular and varied scenery and the photography package prices.
According to the Taipei-based Wedding Photography Association, more than 5,000 couples from abroad choose Taiwan for their wedding photos last year at an average rate of 425 couples per month.
Photo: CNA
More than 65 percent of couples came from Hong Kong and Macau, the association said.
Ma, who works at a bank, said it was increasingly popular in Hong Kong for engaged couples to go to Taiwan to have their wedding photos taken, citing prices, varied scenery and creative ideas as incentives.
Emily chose New Taipei City’s Tamsui (淡水) and its “wedding photography base” for her photo shoot.
The “bases” are the brainchild of wedding photography companies and include a variety of backgrounds, such as “scholarly” buildings; juancun (眷村), or military family villages, to convey a nostalgic atmosphere; European-style settings; floating chapels; luxurious settings similar to those seen in South Korean television series; and underwater shots.
The “bases” are meant to cut down on the time needed to reach various scenic sties, the companies said, adding that the bases have not only proven popular with foreign clients, but helped win a slice of the domestic market as well.
The bases help reduce logistics problems for the photographers and the amount of time for the photo shoot as the team only has to go to one location to find a wide variety of scenery.
In Ma’s case, she chose her outfits and went over the details of the photo shoot on the first day of her trip and the photo shoot took up the second day. On the third day the couple was able to take a tour of “must visit” sites in Taiwan, thanks to the Taiwan High Speed Rail.
On their last day in Taiwan, the couple returned to the wedding photo company and chose the photographs they wanted, Ma said, adding that they received their wedding album two months after they returned home.
The wedding photo session cost NT$40,000 (US$1,335), after a 40 percent discount, or about the price it would have cost in Hong Kong, Ma said.
Tracy Wong from Macau did her photo shoot in Taiwan in April.
Aside from having met her husband in Taiwan while they were both studying at the division of preparatory programs for overseas Chinese at the National Taiwan Normal University, Wong said they chose Taiwan because conditions here are more liberal.
Wong said she liked that they could leave the company’s “base” and go to other locations, adding that they had visited the Gaomei Wetland Preservation Area in Pingtung County, New Taipei City’s Pingsi (平溪) and a military dependents’ villages.
A key element of photo shoots in Taiwan is the simplicity and the naturalness of the shoots, Wong said.
The Tourism Bureau estimates that the wedding-photography industry could contribute NT$225 million per year to the economy — including hotels, meals, ground transportation and incidentals — if foreign couples stayed an average of four days on a photo-shoot trip and paid an average of NT$35,000 for their photography package.
Taiwan has a unique style of wedding photography and can hold its own in the international community, Tourism Bureau Deputy Director Liu Hsi-lin (劉喜林) said, adding that the bureau has made honeymoon travel a focus of development.
There is still a lot of room for improvement on handling weddings and wedding photography, Liu said, adding that the wedding industry has a bright future as it can utilize the creativity which Taiwan is known for to arrange every aspect of a wedding.
Creativity is in part the primary reason the wedding industry has been able to make a name for itself in the Asia, and the success is done to the wedding photography companies themselves, Liu said.
Wedding Photography Association president Dai Sheng-ho (戴勝和) said the average price for a wedding package was between NT$50,000 to NT$60,000, adding that most of the foreign clientele were from nearby nations or were of ethnic Chinese descent.
The average package cost and fringe benefits to tourism puts the average expenditure per couple at NT$150,000 to NT$200,000, Dai said.
Taiwan has the potential to develop into a wedding photography kingdom, since it has perhaps the highest density of wedding photographers, Dai said.
However, rules and regulations, as well as certification, must first be put in place to ensure quality of service, Dai said.
An increase in Taiwanese boats using China-made automatic identification systems (AIS) could confuse coast guards patrolling waters off Taiwan’s southwest coast and become a loophole in the national security system, sources familiar with the matter said yesterday. Taiwan ADIZ, a Facebook page created by enthusiasts who monitor Chinese military activities in airspace and waters off Taiwan’s southwest coast, on Saturday identified what seemed to be a Chinese cargo container ship near Penghu County. The Coast Guard Administration went to the location after receiving the tip and found that it was a Taiwanese yacht, which had a Chinese AIS installed. Similar instances had also
GOOD DIPLOMACY: The KMT has maintained close contact with representative offices in Taiwan and had extended an invitation to Russia as well, the KMT said The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) would “appropriately handle” the fallout from an invitation it had extended to Russia’s representative to Taipei to attend its international banquet last month, KMT Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) said yesterday. US and EU representatives in Taiwan boycotted the event, and only later agreed to attend after the KMT rescinded its invitation to the Russian representative. The KMT has maintained long-term close contact with all representative offices and embassies in Taiwan, and had extended the invitation as a practice of good diplomacy, Chu said. “Some EU countries have expressed their opinions of Russia, and the KMT respects that,” he
VIGILANCE: The military is paying close attention to actions that might damage peace and stability in the region, the deputy minister of national defense said The People’s Republic of China (PRC) might consider initiating a hack on Taiwanese networks on May 20, the day of the inauguration ceremony of president-elect William Lai (賴清德), sources familiar with cross-strait issues said. While US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken’s statement of the US expectation “that all sides will conduct themselves with restraint and prudence in the period ahead” would prevent military actions by China, Beijing could still try to sabotage Taiwan’s inauguration ceremony, the source said. China might gain access to the video screens outside of the Presidential Office Building and display embarrassing messages from Beijing, such as congratulating Lai
Four China Coast Guard ships briefly sailed through prohibited waters near Kinmen County, Taipei said, urging Beijing to stop actions that endanger navigation safety. The Chinese ships entered waters south of Kinmen, 5km from the Chinese city of Xiamen, at about 3:30pm on Monday, the Coast Guard Administration said in a statement later the same day. The ships “sailed out of our prohibited and restricted waters” about an hour later, the agency said, urging Beijing to immediately stop “behavior that endangers navigation safety.” Ministry of National Defense spokesman Sun Li-fang (孫立方) yesterday told reporters that Taiwan would boost support to the Coast Guard