Putting a price on bliss: About $1,000
Despite Chinese numerology predicting a "widow" year, business is booming for wedding portrait studios.
By KRIS HUNDLEY
Published September 19, 2005
BEIJING - By midmorning, Dragon Lake Park is dotted with a half-dozen brides, each surrounded by grooms, mothers and photographers like frilly white flowers smothered by bees.
This green space, blocked in by highways and high-rises, has become a favorite location for wedding photographers whose business is booming as increasingly wealthy young newlyweds splurge on their celebration.
In Mao's day, a politically correct Communist couple would stop by a photo studio aftertheir wedding and get a single snapshot to commemorate the event.
Today, Beijingers in their 20s mob fancy stores, plunking down as much as $5,000 for packages that include 24-inch oil-like portraits, photo-embossed crystal paperweights and poster-size glamor shots of the young couple in love.
Dennis Yang is with Paris Bridal Shop, a Taiwanese company that operates a chain of photo studios in China. In one Beijing store, young women in tight beige uniforms and leopard-skin heels cater to dozens of assertive young brides and their anxious-looking partners as they flip through sample albums.
Yang said the last three years have not been great, due to SARS and Chinese numerology that deemed the calendar bad for weddings.
"2005 is supposed to be the "widow' year," he said matter-of-factly. "But 2006 should be regular."
Still, Yang predicts the store in busy downtown Beijing will handle 5,000 couples this year, about the same as in 2004. He estimates his customers have minimum combined monthly incomes of $1,200, more than an average Chinese makes in a year.
"It is obvious that consuming power is rising rapidly in China," he said. "A lot of Taiwanese come to China and are shocked at how the Chinese are spending their money."
By U.S. standards, the newlyweds get a lot for their yuan. A $1,000 package of photos, the store's average purchase, includes a half-dozen sittings in everything from traditional Chinese costumes to evening gowns, all provided by the store.
Racks of clothing line walls on the shop's second floor, while makeup artists and hairstylists hover over young brides in one corner. Eminem's Lose Yourself blares from overhead speakers as women dash into changing rooms and tuxedoed grooms slump in armchairs.
The Paris Bridal Shop can handle as many as 30 couples a day in its eight studios, each one outfitted with a different motif. The store also has a half-dozen crews that accompany couples to nearby Dragon Lake Park.
While most of the shop's customers are Chinese, Yang said occasionally they will encounter Chinese women marrying Western men.
"Frankly, I hate to receive foreigners," he said. "They take a long time to consider their purchase and they don't like to spend money."