Here's the deal - we were not going to be fleeced by the studio. We've heard too many horror stories of brides buckling under stress of choosing photos, couples racking their brains for hours to pick and still top up and lastly, those who sit for hours and still buy all of the photos. The wedded ones throw me a grimace and advise to be wise about the situation - unless you set your heart and mind about viewing this every single month, the mileage will never quite be achieved. Yes, there are acquaintances who view their videos and photos at every single milestone of their lives, housewarming, children's birth and the story just goes on and on and on.

Tips on how NOT to be fleeced (no hard and fast rules but at least it helped us!)

#1 Negotiating for all soft copies

Since the day we embarked on this new chapter we knew that we did not want any huge coffee books nor be put in a situation that we had to haggle over the purchase of more pictures just to fill the huge book.

#2 Selecting a timeslot near closing time

We weren't too eager to view the photos that fast somehow - did not help that we had prior appointments so then, the slot was booked 3 weeks later. We were probably alot calmer and less excited as compared to a post-shoot euphoria that any couple would experience after the harrowing shoot! To cut the long story short, 7pm was our slot and they closed at 9pm. To facilitate the ease, I booked us tickets to a 930pm movie so we had to get ourselves out for dinner and then movie. No excuse for the coordinator to hold us up or for either of us to hem and haw over the selection.

The coordinator suggested that they packed dinner for us since the selection would take quite a while.

#3 Have an idea how many shots to select per outfit

We had a total of 3 gowns and 1 casual shot and with 46 shots we knew that we could not have too many of the same outfit.

#4 Chop chop curry pok!

I suppose being two rather decisive people and having the consensus meant that neither of us would spend too much time over one photo. Out of 158 shots, we had to remove two thirds. Here's how we stuck by our 46 shot rule

- Remove duplicates of the same frame i.e. the photogs tend to take a near and far shot, so decide which is prettier and remove!
- Remove photos that do not appeal at first glance i.e. fat cheeks, imbalanced smiles and big-small eyes cannot be photoshopped. Face it if it does not appeal once, the second will not either.
- Ignore what the coordinator has to say about her opinions of what is nice - nobody would look at it again except the couple so it's your opinion that matters!

So that's how we picked and signed off the final 46 that made it to our mini photobook without a single top up - all in an hour! If it surprised you how efficient we were, it surprised the salesperson who closed our deal too.

Meanwhile, here's a snap of one of the many that were rejected!

3 months till we get our final copies...cannot wait!