December 6, 2009
Hotel Indonesia Kempinski Jakarta
Photos by Merwin of Moreno Photography

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, what about motion picture?
These are lines from the award-winning wedding demo made by Paper Cranes Production, a group from the sun-kissed harbors of Sydney.

It’s our first time to shoot a film-maker/wedding videographer and it’s out of the country.
Santo and Dewi are based in Sydney Australia but were born in Indonesia. Jakarta happens to be their hometown, and as is customary to Filipinos and most Asians, they opted to fly back to their hometown to get married there.

Santo(Jack) is one heck of a cool guy and Dewi is such an angel. We just felt really comfortable right when we first met them in Jakarta days before their wedding. We bonded over technical stuff rather than details about the wedding! We even joked around telling Santo to shoot himself or his bride during the wedding day. And yep, he just can’t help it, he shot his bride.

santo working on his wedding from Mayad Studios on Vimeo.

If you are not familiar with their work here’s a sample: their own love story done by Santo himself.

Santo & Dewi Prewedding Film (Say Yes) from Paper Cranes Productions on Vimeo.

So wasn’t it a pressure doing his wedding?

We’ve been out of the country for 3 weeks in a row: Malaysia, Seattle, China, Bali, Jakarta and man it wasn’t easy at all! Our last stop was Santo and Dewi’s wedding. You can just imagine how dead tired we were! On their wedding day we woke up at 4am to get to the hotel at 5am. Yup, that’s how it is in Jakarta. The day started with makeup sessions as early as 3am, followed by some family cermemonies, since the couple were both Chinese. This includes the cutting of the ribbon, to signify that the older sibling who is not yet married is giving authority to the younger sibling to get married ahead of him. Still part of the tradition, the parents of the bride are the ones to drop the veil on the brides face. When the groom finally gets in the room, he will raise up his brides veil. Then there’s the tea ceremony in which the couple offers tea to the family members in exchange for Ang Pow. The Christian ceremonies followed soon after. The wedding was amazing. It was filled with fun, laughter and tears…lots and lots of tears. It’s funny how Santo and Dewi were telling me that they consider themselves as fun-loving people. That’s why they liked most of our upbeat SDEs. But during the wedding day I can’t help but agree that they are indeed a fun but there were just too much emotions that day. Tears just welled up on everyone’s faces during the ceremony so I decided not to go with an upbeat tempo and chose the slow ones on the list of songs he gave me.

translation for the vows in Indonesian:
Dewi: “for richer or poorer
in sickness and in health
no matter skinny or fat (???)
I hope you will be fatter soon
Until our father God calls us back to his house in heaven.”

Santo and Dewi of Papercranes Production Sydney from Mayad Studios on Vimeo.

One thing I really learned from this wedding is that no matter how tired or sick you are, when you are doing it for people whom you can easily get along with, who even makes you feel like guests, enjoy your company and treats you with respect, there’s
energy that keeps you going not because of the pressure but because of a new-found friendship.

To Santo and Dewi, Jakarta was a blast because of you guys! God Bless on your new journey and thanks for the wonderful treat!

We also met Jakarta’s finest videographers and photographers; Merwin (Moreno & Co), Ian Salim, Edward Suhadi and Kuswendy Yasukin. Thanks for the treat Ian and for bringing us to the airport!