alli216's reviews

I just wrote a review about Giao's husband, who was also my wedding photographer (Thai Mai Photography), and I've gotta say...these two make an AMAZING team. If you're looking for a photographer and a hair/makeup artist, look no further than Thai and Giao!

But anyway, this review is about Giao. I had my trial and wedding day hair/makeup done by her, and I was soooo pleased with the results! Giao definitely knows what she's doing...I can only describe her work as magic in the making. But not only is her work phenomenal, Giao herself is a wonderful person to work with. She was so friendly and open with me during the trial, and i could tell she really loves what she does and genuinely cares about her clients. On the wedding day, Giao came promptly at 5:30am to our hotel, got straight to work on me, and transformed me into a beautiful bride! She was really meticulous and took her time working on me, yet still stayed true to her time estimate (and if you've been in a wedding before, you know how hard it is to stay on schedule!).

I was also totally floored by Giao's attentiveness throughout the rest of the day. She stayed for the reception and all of my dress changes (I think i changed dresses three or four times that day), and did touch ups after each change. Not only that, but she kept reminding me to drink water and stay hydrated, she gave some helpful reminders to my bridesmaids, and even worked with the photographers on getting some portrait shots of me during some down time! Giao really gave 110% of herself to us on our wedding day, i feel like i lucked out tremendously with her. She so sweet and caring, and totally went above and beyond all my expectations...I can't thank her enough!

Let me just begin first by saying that i never...and i mean NEVER...write reviews about anything--not restaurants, not eBay transactions, nada. Maybe it's because I'm lazy, maybe it's because I don't have the time, but most likely because I don't think I've received a service that wowed me enough to actually praise it over the world wide web.

That is, not until my husband and I met Thai.

There aren't enough words to express our appreciation for Thai and all the amazing work he's done for our wedding. From our very first meeting with him, we knew he would be so easy to work with. He was funny, easygoing, and genuinely seemed to care about capturing all the wonderful moments from our engagement and wedding.

I'll start with our engagement shoot. We wanted to hit up two locations--the coastal trail by Land's End in San Francisco (where my husband proposed to me), and the UC Berkeley campus (where I went to school and where our relationship first began). During our engagement shoot, Thai was remarkably laid-back, gave us suggestions for what to do and how to pose (which was wonderful for us, because we had never done any sort of professional photo shoot prior to this), and put up with all the hiking and climbing on the trail. He was so flexible with all the challenges of doing this photo shoot with us! Not only did we make him hike this trail, but we also had him drive out to Berkeley afterward, where he still got some amazing shots for us! We were so happy with our engagement photos when they came out...we couldn't have imagined a better e-session experience.

And don't get me started on the actual wedding day! Thai and his assistant were very prompt, very professional, and got along wonderfully with our guests. We had family and friends come up to us after the wedding telling us how much they loved Thai, how kind and friendly he was with them, and how polite and respectful he was (which is a really big plus at a Chinese wedding)! I really want to highlight just how well he worked with our ridiculously large family: after the ceremony we had to take a combination of different photos with our immediate family, our parents, our siblings, and both sides of our extended family. Thai was really patient with everyone (just imagine what it must be like to get 30 Asians to pose for one photo), and really worked hard to make sure every family member was portrayed clearly in each shot.

Thai was also really attentive to us in capturing every single moment of our day. Because of the tight time constraints of our wedding, we couldn't give him a lot of time to take "getting ready" pics or detail shots, or even just portrait photos of us and the bridal party, but he was SO flexible with that and worked around our schedule for the day to get the shots that we wanted! After the wedding we had time to take some portrait shots and photos with the wedding party, and even though i knew everyone was exhausted, Thai was still really energetic and kept on going to get as many shots of us as possible.

All in all, I'd have to say that Thai is, hands down, one of the best photographers I have ever worked with. I've been in a bunch of weddings and have seen quite a few photographers at work, but none as friendly, easygoing, and talented as Thai. We haven't gotten our wedding photos from him yet (our wedding was only a couple weeks ago), but we know that they will look amazing! If you're a bride and you're looking for an organized, professional, and flexible wedding photographer who will get along great with your guests, Thai is definitely your guy.