Engagement Photos While Traveling the World
A Professional Kimono Photoshoot
I proposed to Yuki at Mt. Fuji, knowing that we would soon visit Kyoto where we had scheduled a Japanese kimono photoshoot. For all intents and purposes, I think this serves as our engagement photos as 1) there’s a professional photographer taking pictures of us and 2) we are now engaged.
We wouldn’t have booked the kimono photoshoot if it weren’t for the fact that last summer, while we were in Naha, Okinawa, Airbnb cancelled one of our reservations suddenly. The Japanese government required everyone running an Airbnb to get a license within a month, and not everyone was able to get the license in time; anyone who didn’t have a valid license had all of their bookings cancelled. Apparently Airbnb had to cancel over $1 million worth of rentals. Ours was one of those, and as an apology for the inconvenience, we received double the booking cost as a future voucher as well as an additional $100 coupon to put towards an AirBnB Experience. Experiences are events and activities put on by local hosts. This was our first AirBnB Experience and we can say that it was quite a fun time!
Our photographer Bruno and his mother met us at a kimono rental shop and helped us and one other girl from China, who was a part of our group photo session, to pick out kimonos. The shop also did Yuki’s hair and can do makeup as well, but Yuki did her own makup. Bruno had a deal with the shop, which was substantially less than the sticker price too.
Picking out kimonos, dressing up, hair styling, and then taking the subway three stops to Kyoto Imperial Palace Gardens took the better part of 3 hours. Then we had an hour and a half of photo taking, which eventually gave us 60 good photographs. Bruno even had props with him, including three parasols and a katana.
We’re pretty happy with how the photos turned out and we’re glad we had the experience. It was a lot of fun wearing kimonos and it was great to have someone take photos of us, since we don’t have many that include both of us.
