Glitz Galour: The New Age Chinese Wedding

Take an extravagant Western wedding - Roses, a big white dress and veil, tuxedos, a fancy hotel and a lavish dinner and mix it up with some Chinese characteristics and you get one hell of a show!

There was an announcer, a staged performance by the couple, a video slideshow of how they met and a number of games.



Tank, a classmate of mine from the 2007 Fudan-Queens exchange program got married last night. Him and his new wife, Ingrid are a great couple and I am so happy they invited me. While I found much of the ceremony and reception a little cheezy and over the top, I also found it quite beautiful. Even though it was a western style wedding, there were many Chinese aspects to it. For instance:

The beautiful couple!

• Attire: The couple changed four times throughout the night, ending in a suit and a beautiful red qipao.
• Gifts: It is a tradition to give the bride and groom cash in a red envelope. My family gave me a red envelope to give to the married couple.
  
• Sign in: According to Wikipedia, it is a tradition to have two people at the sign in table, one from the groom's side and one from the bride's side. My friend represented the groom's side and invited me to join her. Hope I didn't mess up the tradition by having three people at the table!
  
• Food: 10 course meal! It was fantastic. So much great Chinese food, including crab, shrimp, noodles....everything you shouldn't eat on passover. (I abstained expcept for the crab. Just had to try it!) The only one issue I had was the controversial serving of the traditional sharkfin soup...It doesn't even taste that good.
• Toasts: It is a tradition that the couple walks around to each table and the guests say a toast. The brides maid and best man are responsible for chugging back glasses of wine. They turn very red and get very drunk.
• Poses: Chinese people think of the most creative and awkward picture poses I have ever seen! Seeing all the posters of Tank and Ingrid was one of my highlights for sure!
• Celine Dion and Shania Twain's voices were heard several times throughout the night. A true sign that it was in fact a Chinese wedding.

• 

Amazing poses!

During the dinner, as I mentioned, they played lots of games. The main games were trivia questions about the newly weds. So there I was, sitting at the back of the room, eating my sharkfin soup with my newfound Fudan friends when I hear my English name being called out. They had 6 people on the stage and were asking us a trivia question. What I understood was "How long have....known....wedding." I assumed they were asking us how long we knew the couple for. So I started, "Tank was my classmate last year..." The whole crowd burst out laughing. They were asking us how long Tank and Ingrid knew each other before getting married. Anyway, I spent the rest of the time on stage completely silent while people around me were guessing. I still don't know how it happened but I ended up winning the trivia game without saying anything. I won this really weird doll in a bunny suit. Good times...



















My prize!