My Experience with Hello Muse Pre-Wedding Photography: Part 1

From Hello Muse's website

When I was first looking for pre-wedding photographers, I was very wary of potentially being scammed. There are a ton of companies that handle these types of shoots across various countries in Asia, but of course, my heart was set on Korea.

I did as much research as I could to see what the prices were among the different coordinators like Ido Wedding, Wedding Ritz, and more, and settled on a (now defunct) company that was very kind, attentive and flexible. The entire package cost around $2500 USD (in early 2015). Unfortunately, they went under a couple of months after I had paid my deposit, but they were very forthcoming about that information and returned my deposit to me right away, which was nothing short of a miracle.

I then researched a bit more and found another place, Hello Muse, which had a lovely website interface and seemed to have good community engagement on Facebook. After e-mailing back and forth with them, I really felt great about the experience and decided to settle. Unlike some of the other coordinators I had talked to at other companies in the past, they were very helpful and provided several options for each part of the process (studio, hair/makeup, dress shops) and also provided prices for each. I'm not sure if I can actually disclose the price I spent on the entire package, but I will say it was between $2500 and $3000 USD.

That price included:
- Pre-wedding shoot coordinators/translators
- Indoor photo shoot at a studio of our choice
- Transportation to and from studio/salon locations
- Hair and makeup for the bride and groom
- 2 white dresses
- 1 colored dress
- 1 mini-dress
- Various wedding shoes to use
- Various hair accessories
- A bolero (which I didn't use)
- 1 tuxedo
- 1 additional tuxedo (+$$)
- Tons of bow ties
- A 20-page album with edited photos
- A frame
- All original (raw) photos downloaded digitally
- The 20 edited photos on a CD
- Mini lunch!

They broke down the itinerary into specific sections so that there would be no question as to what to expect. The only thing that wasn't specified in the contract was the ending times for the wardrobe tour and the photo shoot, which I'm guessing is because the nature of both of those events is such that it really depends on what the person is looking for. Since I wasn't particularly picky about the dresses, I allowed them to choose dresses based off of my height/figure, and my husband did the same as well, and we were in and out in about three hours.

For the photo shoot itself, between the time we started and the time we ended, only about 3 hours had passed, but we were told that things were often dragged out much longer with pickier brides. Same with our hair and makeup. Our coordinator said she had never seen hair and makeup be finished an hour and a half early, but my husband and I basically shrugged and figured, "What's there to complain about?"

Because of the way the flights were arranged, and because I didn't really think too much of the start time, and also because both my husband and I had lived in Korea for some years, I figured we could land, run as fast as we could to the bus, and make it to our appointment in time, although I was pretty nervous about any unforeseen events.

This is basically how it went down. Our appointment was scheduled for 1:30 in the afternoon (since our flight was coming in at 11:35 AM). Calculating the average time it would take to get through Customs (around 30 minutes), I had hoped we would be at the bus stop by 12:05 PM. We actually made it to the bus stop at 12:08 PM, and I went to the ticket counter to ask for our tickets into Gangnam, but as it turns out, Bus #6006 into Seoul wasn't a bus with purchasable tickets at the kiosk; we would have to pay the bus driver directly, which we did! 15,000 KRW per person for an approximated 70-minute transit time.

Luckily, the next bus came by at 12:15 PM, but because of some pretty heavy traffic, we didn't reach Hotel Riviera until about 1:45 PM, 15 minutes after we were supposed to have met with them. If I had my old phone or wifi, I would have tried to contact them to let them know, but I kept thinking we would make it in time. We crossed the street to where the Aloft Hotel was located, and went into the building right next to it and hoped it was the right one.

Since I didn't have the printout of their instructions, we looked for the Hello Muse name in the building directory on the 12th floor, but after knocking on that door and calling the phone number printed outside for about 15 minutes with no response, I had almost given up hope when I checked my phone to see if I could still locate the e-mail with their exact instructions. Thank God e-mails are downloaded and accessible even with the absence of wifi! It turns out the instructions said to come to the 8th floor, and so we did. A happy Anna was there to greet us, and she is really the sweetest person ever. She let us leave our luggage in the office and assured us that we were right on time (even though it was almost 2 PM). We took a walk (about 10-15 minutes) to the tuxedo rental place, and in the same building was the dress shop. For the second tuxedo place, we took a taxi there, and then another one back to the office.

When everything was finished, she informed us that another person would meet us downstairs the following morning at 10:10 AM, and that this person would take us to get our hair and makeup done (my husband was very surprised that he would have makeup on as well), and the following morning we came by about 10 minutes early just to be sure, and Haeng was already there waiting! We took a taxi to the salon and after about 2 hours, we were all done! Since there was still time to kill, Haeng said we could go grab some coffee at the nearest cafe since it was late August and too hot to just stand outside, and that she would meet us after about an hour. "Don't sweat," she advised. "And don't touch your face." All we could do was laugh.

My husband and I were able to spend some time like we used to, just sitting in that coffee shop by the window and talking. He said that was his favorite part about the experience since it was one of our favorite things to do back when we lived there.

Natural individual lashes

Afterwards, we met Haeng again downstairs and she walked us to the studio where we were able to hang out for a bit and look through pictures before speaking with the photographer, who was very attentive and asked us what kind of photos we wanted, and what we didn't want, and whether there were any specific poses/body parts we didn't want to draw attention to.

The bridal assistant was also very kind and really went out of her way to make sure both the dress and I looked good for the pictures, actually stopping the photographer sometimes so she could jump in and readjust a tiny part of my skirt or my hair. I really appreciated the attention they gave to us, and Haeng even bought us some vegan kimbap! It still tasted amazing, and I'm incredibly grateful she took our dietary preferences seriously.

At the end of the day, we were all pretty tired, and I was ready to buy some makeup remover at the nearest Face Shop, and Haeng suggested instead that we go to Olive Young since it was right nearby, and she was exactly right! We picked up some food before heading back to the hotel, and we really could not have asked for a better experience.

We should be getting back the raw pictures in a week or two, so I'll be posting a Part 2 to this post eventually!

Click for Part 2!

Click for Part 3!