Me and the wife weren't interested, but we had to literally beg friends and family not to. The 'in my primitive culture I believe cameras steal part of your soul' argument went a long way there. Thank god for that one.

Occasionally you'll see a tasteful set, but most of them are just so so so so so awful.

We just got some "prelim" pics done and the proofs came back with random English words scattered across the white space on most of them. I pointed this out and told the studio workers that the words were useless and rather tacky to say the least. My wife, her mother and the workers were dumbfounded at my reaction. They said the words are just there to add colour and make the pics more beautiful. I vehemently disagreed and wouldn't approve the proofs. Evidently this reaction caused my family to lose face, if you can believe that nonsense!

Conclusion: I rewrote all the words and the new proofs should arrive in a week. Evidently the pics could not be printed without some copy. Unreal!

On another related note:
They put my wife in her wedding dress and proceeded to slap a pairs or ice skates on her for a shoot including me in a jacket and jeans, no skates for me. (They only had men's size 8) Anyways, they stood us side by side as if we were skiing and told us to bend over and pretend to be skiing down a hill. Well, of course I questioned this ridiculous suggestion! I was met with, "Derek, do as he says"...I said, "Why?"....they said, "He's the professional!"...."Of what?" I said........I wouldnt do it and again, everyone thought I was the idiot. ....That shoot got scrapped and I'm not popular at the studio.

NO    You may be in China bit you still have rights,,,,,,if you dnt want anything then be firm and say NO and walk away

I did the studio pics. I figured why not? I'm a goofball and it seemed like it could be fun. A little background info. I'm a guy, 188cm, 86kilos. I don't think I'm a giant but i'm a bit bigger than the average Chinese dude. For those who don't know, you're supposed to change clothes several times and these studios are supposed to provide your outfits. Some of them aren't real clothes. They're costumes for stage plays. Anyway, they only had two suits that fit me. One was metalic silver. The other was off white. Imagine having to choose between "Dr. Evil" from Austin Powers or Colonel Sanders from KFC. Fortunately I brought my own suit which they let me wear for at least some of the pictures. Those are the ones we kept. The albumn's text is full if Chinglish, misspellings and jibberish because I didn't get a chance to proofread before printing. I had to work that day. Now my wifes pregnate and she's insisting on us taking those naked from the waist up together pics which she says is a long standing Chinese tradition. We'll see how this plays out.

I did the photo shoot with my wife when we first came to China.  I thought it was fun.  It made my wife happy and that was good enough reason for me to keep quiet about the stupid stuff.

Though, I did make them take the English "love poems" out of the album.  They were all either jibberish or really moronic things like "Love is like a frog".  Yep, that line was actually in there.

Amazingly, I was the only one who ever called them on the English in their albums.  My wife didn't even notice it until I pointed it out and then she couldn't stop laughing at how bad it was.

When we got married in a simple service when we first came back to Australia. I always felt bad that she didn't get a better deal.
so the first time we went back we did the photo thing in the studio.
I was glad to do this for her and would do it again if she wanted.
also it was a diffrent expirence and a bit of fun just for us.
we could never have afforded it in Aus.

I would really love to have them done, but I'd be in charge of the photo-shoot. No tacky backgrounds, no random text or anything like that crap. Something simple and tasteful, like a photo-shoot should be, that will be nice to look at decades from now without wincing. It looks fun if done right.

I really think there's nothing wrong with it.I had it done with my husband for our wedding. It's something completely different to what we are used to in Italy (where photo shoots are done on the wedding day and are more of a reportage of the celebrations). So we did the changing of outfits but as many of you said we chose to avoid the ridiculous english "poems". We were lucky: both the studio and the photographers did a great job. I told my husband: since we only have this chance, let's choose the best costumes in the house and have some fun! So we did. And when we celebrated our wedding in Italy we had our "italian" photo shoot. Much classier and elegant. So now we have both. I think it was great. 

I think it is a fantasic idea! It gets rather irksome back home getting to the reception and having to wait for an hour or more while inside the happy couple have their phtos taken. This way, we give the happyh couple thier loot of hong-baos and go straight to the eating and drinking!
Besides, the girls LOVE it so much, it really makes them happy, like playing dressup with dolls, only that THEY are the doll!