This is my first wedding shoot using purely the iPhone and Blackberry.  And it was coverage of a traditional Malay Wedding.

 

Of course the quality cannot be compared to the usual dSLR but for convenience it does capture the essence of the wedding.  I used the iPhone 4 which has a built-in flash.  So this helps in certain situations like backlit shots.  What was difficult however, was to do be more creative like I usually do with my dSLR and try to do the manual focus and manual exposure since these phone cameras do not have such functions (yet).  You may be wondering how I got away using these camera phones to capture a wedding?  Well, to be frank, it was my nephew’s wedding.  It was held in Kota Bahru, Kelantan.  As you can see from the photos, it was a perfect kampung wedding with all the wonderful Malay food including nasi kerabu which is the local rice with a special salad.  Kota Bahru is only 30 minutes from the Thai border so you also get very good Thai cuisine.  While there me and my wife also took the opportunity to take a stroll down the famous Passion Beach or what the locals call Pantai Terang Bulan (the word passion is off-limits to the convervative PAS who rule Kelantan, so they changed the name of the beach to something more wholesome!).

It was a wonderful time covering this wedding because I missed the kampung feeling so much.  Watching the pengantin go through the wedding ceremony, especially the acara meruncis was really so exciting.  I had the pleasure of swishing the stalk of flowers all over the bride and getting water on their faces!!!

 

It also opened my eyes to the beauty of the simple lifestyle – people here in Kelantan live with very little but have so much in terms of the real beauty and meaning of life.  I went away convinced that (to borrow a advertising tagline) you don’t have to be rich to be happy!  I learnt so much just being here for 3 short days!