Our professional photographs have finally arrived!!! Yay!!!

All variations of our photos (1608 pictures in total) have been posted to the following web albums:

Preparation & Bridesmaids at Wild Ginger		Wedding Party at Kitchener City Hall
Family at Kitchener City Hall		Ceremony at Walper Terrace
Reception & Mingling at Walper Terrace		Dinner & Kissing at Walper Terrace
		Enjoy!!! ^_^
Dancing at Walper Terrace

We have been lazy and did not upload many of our photos but are doing so right now! :)

Captions may or may not come into the picture later but we'll see.

It will still be another three weeks before we get our official wedding photos but when we get that, we will be sure to upload the full resolution here.

China trip was super fun but now we are fully back into the work life and busily scrambling to get everything done.

So...we're on a trip to celebrate our wedding...and what do we do, but attend another! :) It was fun - we attended a cousin's cousin's son's (2nd cousin once removed?) wedding. There were over 300 people at the restaurant, and the food was pretty good. The bride looked great, but she only changed dresses once. They had these neat confetti-blasting tubes that seemed to be a lot of fun (but a pain to clean up after) and the MC did a great job of keeping the crowd active. Of course, he was speaking way too fast for me to catch most of the content, but the stuff I did understand made me laugh.

During the dinner we were seated with some family, one couple brought their 2-year old daughter. I have never met a more well-behaved 2-year old. She was also very bright (although too shy/nervous to speak much) and understood almost everything said to her (even more complex instructions about how to browse through photos on the digital camera).

Also duiring the dinner, I was paraded by 3 different tables of distant relatives so they could "see the foriegner". The Groom's mother seemed to get a kick out of talking to me - weird. A bunch of them said I look like Dashan (a famous Canadian in China). Go figure.

Xiaopu: "Joseph got more attention than me :( And I'm the father's cousin's cousin - Joseph is just the father's cousin's cousin-in-law"

Two days ago we went to get our photos taken as a couple. These posed photo shoots are VERY popular in China. There were so many stores to choose from. They all offered wedding photo shoots. Since we already had wedding photos done, I wanted to take photos of us in ancient Chinese costumes! (see google images example from right -->)

It's weird, in Canada when you do wedding photos, one tends to hire a photographer to follow you around on your wedding day. In China though, you go to a photo studio to get specially posed photos in different dresses and outfits. They spend A LOT of time prettying the girl up.

My make-up and hair styling time took more than three hours! Mind you, I had two different hair styles and A LOT of make-up. I swear, my photos will not look like me... :( They made my eyes look pretty big... The whole photo shoot took about five hours. Very tiring after a while.

When we were getting my photos taken the photographer and his assistant refered to me as "mei3 ren2" (literal translation = beauty) and called Joseph "shuai4 ge1" (literal translation = handsome brother). It was very humourous.

I had originally wanted to get photos taken that were like Ming's (click here to see example) but we weren't able to find a store that offered similar clothing styles. In the end, I really liked the style of this one store and so we went there. The men's costume selection was somewhat limited but they had a nice selection of women's clothing.

Although the street had dozens of studios, what really sold me on this studio was their photographic style. We flipped through their portfolio and I really liked the look of their pictures. Other studios were too boring.

Anyhow, when we get our digital negatives we will be sure to post them here. Warning, the pictures will be cheezy.  

We arrived in Wuhan two days ago - and the air here is even worse than in Beijing :( We're staying with Xiaopu's family, and it's been a blast, but the air quality has left something to be desired. The apartment we're in belongs to Xiaopu's grandmother, and typically her uncle's family (wife and son) also live here, but since we're visiting, the son - Xiaopu's cousin Yang Qian - has vacated his room for us. He's staying at his girlfriend's house while we're here. Lucky him :)

The trip from Beijing to Wuhan was via overnight sleeper trains (an example of the accomodations is on the right) and it would have been a real pain to lug our baggage around if not for Pu's uncle Yang Bin who came all the way to Beijing to meet us, and help us get to Wuhan. As a note, although it was great to have the third set of hands, Yang Bin is a very outgoing person who enjoys bargaining, debating and generally causing a ruccus ;) He did, however, manage to get us access to the priority waiting lounges, discount drink prices, and such.

In Wuhan our schedule has been a lot less hectic than it was in Bejing, and so we've only been to see a couple of places - a park and a temple - in addition to some shopping and A LOT of great food. Pu's family has been very welcoming of Joseph, however it probably would have gone smoother if Pu's mom hadn't told them all he couldn't speak any chinese...as it is, they have assumed he doesn't understand anything that's going on.

We've also booked our flight back to Beijing - early enough that we'll be able to visit the Great Wall before heading back to Canada.

We'll post more about our exploits in Bejing later :)