Today’s bridal gowns are something a little different – the backdrop, beautiful Bali, has become almost the centrepiece. Farah Almasi Couture traveled to Bali with photographer Denise Teo to capture her latest collection “Queen Of The Jungle”. The insanely beautiful backdrop provided such breathtaking shots.

Based in Perth, Farah and Denise travelled to Bali to shoot the collection amongst the beautiful tropical backdrop.

Farah recalls, “The night of our flight I was told there was  a big problem, I cannot have any access to baby tigers and baby elephant unless I had to pay around $7000!?!

So I decided to go ahead but not with these people – just go to the safari park in which I have booked the hotel. I visited Diana who had been organising the connection with the safari park manager to discuss the problem. I was very disappointed as they didn’t inform us before as I have organised the whole trip around the baby tigers and elephants. If I don’t have any access to them what is the point to be there? When I saw Diana she said she had organised other sources and we moved straight away to the Elephant Safari Park Lodge to get to the hotel and organise the gowns and model and have a bit of a rest before I started capturing the beautiful photos with Denise Teo. Denise said “Farah have faith everything will be fine”.

Everything fell into place and Diana had organised in couple of hours the baby tigers with the zoo. I never forget the excitement and hard work of everybody in that week . The first day in the morning and in the afternoon we spent with beautiful elephants. They were very peaceful and comfortable with humans. I was happy because the trainers did treat the elephants very well as sometimes you see them being very aggressive toward the poor animals. The first day we had lovely time there and Denise captured beautiful photos as you see, the second day we travelled a couple of hours to see the baby tigers. They were so cheeky and cute and very strong, particularly when I held them in my arms.

Next we dressed up the model and make sure the designer wedding gowns don’t get crushed and don’t get dirty or damaged and start posing with the 3 of the one month old tigers. They never stayed still, constantly moving forwards and backwards!!! I think Denise took hundreds of photos to capture what you SEE but we had a fantastic day.

The next photo we wanted to take was a photo with 6 months old tiger much bigger than what we see. WOW – when he came out I freaked out, he was very strong and scary and decided to pass him on. I was very worried for poor Rachael Smith the model…we wanted her in one piece to get back home.

For the next two days we stayed at a luxurious honeymoon resort. We had beautiful time and in last day we took my favourite photo in the water. I have ruined my award winning gown in the water to take a beautiful shot…but…I love that photo.

My other favourite part was the photos we took with butterflies. Denise and I went to butterfly farm to see what kind of butterflies they have and we picked the beautiful vibrant green butterfly to organise to be hatched for the next trip, we wanted to take a cover page photo for Balinese wedding magazine. So when we came back for second time they were available and they were baby butterflies and they couldn’t fly but they could walk very fast!! Whenever we wanted to take a shot they moved! It was a very hot day and it was last couple of hours in Bali but with hard work we captured the beautiful short dress again with stunning butterflies.”

Photos by Denise Teo for Farah Almasi Couture