Sheridan & Trent — A Wat Chalong Blessing and a Family Beach Photoshoot

Married already in Australia, Sheridan and Trent came to Phuket in early 2017 to mark the day properly with their daughter Alisha — a five-monk blessing at Wat Chalong followed by a family beach photoshoot on Layan and Patong. What could have been a straightforward booking became a warm, months-long correspondence with the Unique Phuket team, resolved with the couple's trademark good humour.

The planning phase — building trust from December 2016

Sheridan first reached out in December 2016. She and Trent were already legally married in Australia, but their Phuket trip was the chance to have the day itself photographed — with their young daughter Alisha at the centre of it. What they wanted was specific: a Traditional Thai Monks Blessing to open the morning, followed by a family beach photoshoot in the afternoon. From the first correspondence Sheridan was warm, direct and easy to work with — the sort of client relationship where planning stops feeling transactional and starts feeling like a conversation.

The blessing was booked at Wat Chalong, Phuket's largest and most-visited temple. We arranged five monks for the ceremony and organised every appropriate donation and gift for the temple, so that Sheridan and Trent could arrive on the day and simply be present. The photoshoot was scheduled for the same afternoon at Layan Beach on Phuket's quieter north-west coast, with a second short session at Patong for the family portraits.

The day itself — Wat Chalong and the beach

The morning belonged to the temple. The five-monk blessing at Wat Chalong ran quietly and unhurried, with Alisha included in the sai sin cord and the water blessing that closes the ceremony. Afterwards the family moved out to Layan Beach for the photoshoot proper — a stretch of soft sand and casuarina trees that photographs cleanly at any time of day. Patong provided the final family frames before the light went.

After the wedding — the edit and a happy resolution

The images that came back from Khun Daeng were beautiful, but Sheridan had a specific concern about the edit: she felt a handful of frames leaned too editorial for what was, at its heart, a family record. What followed was the part of a planner's job that no one sees — a careful, back-and-forth conversation with the photographer to re-edit those specific images in a way that felt like Sheridan and Trent's day, not a portfolio piece. Sheridan was patient throughout. When the revised set arrived in March 2017, her reply came within minutes:

Sheridan and Trent then gave permission for a selection of the images to be shown on the Unique Phuket website — with one gentle condition, that the more see-through frames stay private to the family. That's the way the story ended: a small planning project delivered end-to-end, a photographer edit resolved with respect on all sides, and a couple who trusted us enough to say yes to sharing it. It's exactly the kind of day this section of the site exists to record.