The Wedding Ceremony

If this was an English wedding, the big day would probably be the day of the legal marriage. In fact, I’m not sure if I’ve ever heard of an English wedding ceremony taking place on a different date than that of the legal ceremony, but in China, well, things are different.

There are 3 distinct elements to getting married in China:

• Marriage Certificate
• Photo-shoot
• Wedding Ceremony

Technically, there are no reasons why these elements cannot be performed in any order. In fact, as you may recall from the ‘Single Certificate’ post, the age requirements for Chinese are 20 and 22 for females and males, respectively, yet it is not unheard of for two young Chinese people choosing to marry at a younger age, going on the photo shoot and having a wedding ceremony 1 or 2 years before they can get legally married. It may be unusual, but it is certainly not unheard of.

Typically, the photo shoot will take place before the wedding ceremony, with your wedding guests looking at the end pictures while celebrating your wedding with you.

For many people, the ceremony will be the most memorable part of the whole process, especially true of most westerners who typically associate the wedding ceremony with the act of getting married. For my wife, the most memorable part was the photo shoot.

RED UNDERWEAR AND A SPECIAL BREAKFAST.

As you probably knew long before you met your Chinese partner, Red is an auspicious (吉利) color in Chinese culture. Red symbolizes good fortune and joy. Red is everywhere during Chinese New Year, other holidays, weddings, and family gatherings. Further to this, a red envelope is a monetary gift that is given in Chinese society on special occasions. Again the red color of the packet symbolizes good luck, you may well receive a good few of these red envelopes during your wedding ceremony.

My day started with a gift of red socks from my future mother-in-law and was followed by a celebratory noodle dish known as Shao zi mian (哨子面). In Shanxi, this noodle dish is often eaten on birthdays and other special occasions. It tastes quite wonderful.

Whilst my day started with a warming noodle breakfast, my wife’s family had started preparing food and decorations a day earlier, and by the time I awoke on my wedding day, my in-laws and the wider family had been busily preparing food, decorations, and setting up tables for the guests.

THE WEDDING STUDIO

After breakfast, we were taken to a local studio from which we had hired my wife’s wedding clothes. The studio also did both mine and my wife’s hair and my wife’s makeup.

The staff here were wonderful, and in fact, this was included as part of our package from the I-Do Photo Studio. As I stated in an earlier post, I cannot speak highly enough of this company, I would recommend them to anyone looking for a similar service in Shanxi.

THE WEDDING CEREMONY

My wife’s family is from rural China, so our wedding was a little more traditional than some of those you might experience in the larger cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, or Chengdu.

Upon returning from the studio we found a hive of activity. My in-laws live in a traditional Chinese home found in rural China, a series of houses each with their own yards, all of which have tall walls with long alleys separating the rows of houses. When we returned we found these alleyways had been transformed into a large outdoor eating area with many tables already filling up with friends and family waiting to see the newest foreigner.

Xiangfen County (襄汾县) is a small district of Linfen City (临汾市). I say small because my wife says small and often refers to it as a town, yet it’s probably larger than many of the smaller cities in the UK. Xiangfen has all the things you might expect to find in a small city, such as shopping malls, huge roads, a high-speed rail link, and plenty of housing stock, yet it’s not exactly on the tourist trails. As such, me being an Englishman was quite the novelty, I found many people wanted to have their picture with me and many children stared in amazement, often too shy to approach me directly. Truth be told, I loved the attention.

My work began soon after returning from the I-Do photo-studio. My first task was to walk around offering cigarettes to all the men that had turned up to witness our wedding ceremony. I found this most peculiar as cigarettes have quite the negative connotation in the West, I felt it was akin to saying ‘Thank you for coming to my wedding, please take this cancer stick as a measure of my gratitude…’. Whilst I found this odd, it’s the oddities that I think make multi-cultural marriages so exciting. As I was offering cigarettes to the male guests, my wife was offering candy to the women and children. The candy was warmly received, as were the cigarettes for that matter.

The cigarette and candy offerings were repeated a few times before moving on to the next stage. Between each round of cigarette offering, people would come to meet me and to have their pictures taken with my wife and me. Again, I found this to be quite a wonderful experience, although I rarely knew what was going on.

Eventually, the formalities began. This was fun, but I have no idea what was happening throughout most of it. I must admit, with great shame, I had not built up enough Mandarin knowledge to get the most out of this experience, I relied on my wife to tell me when to bow and one of her cousins to help me understand who I was supposed to give cigarettes to and when.

The formal ceremony seems to be based around a sequence of showing respect to the heavens and earth, our parents and elders, and to one another. There was lots of bowing, kowtowing, fireworks, and speeches by senior members of the family. My wife’s paternal grandfather (爷爷) seemed to play the role of ‘master of ceremonies’ if you will.

As soon as the kowtowing was over, the food for our guests began and so did my next role. My wife, her cousin, and I walked around all of the guests thanking them for attending our wedding and offering them a drink of Chinese white wine (白酒), which is essentially a spirit, usually in the 50+% strength range. Often the guests would make some toast to us and again, as a result of my being a foreigner, they may stare, take pictures with me or ask me to drink wine with them. Personally, I quite liked the wine, it was just like a very strong vodka in my mind, but my wife was keen to limit my wine drinking.

TOWARDS THE END OF THE DAY

Eventually, my wife and I could sit down and eat the wedding food. We were joined by her parents, sister, and sister-in-law. My foreigner status drew continued attention as people watched to see how I handled chopsticks and I was asked to drink more Baijiu (wine, 白酒), which again, my wife was not overly keen on.

Eventually, people started leaving, and work began on cleaning and tidying up.

My wife and I changed into something a little less formal, started to relax, and prepared for our honeymoon.

This was my first experience of a Chinese wedding. It wasn’t the same experience two Chinese people would have as a number of things were altered to suit my situation (for example, my family was unable to attend the wedding in China, and my Mandarin is pretty poor, limiting my ability to deliver speeches or to sing…). However, I fully enjoyed it, I found it far more fun and significantly more interesting than a western wedding.