All you need to know about having a Chinese Wedding
Posted on April 30, 2009 in the Chinese Wedding Traditions category
This guide will help all the brides out there that are currently planning their Chinese Wedding. I will be gathering all the information I have about Chinese Wedding traditions and those that I included in my own wedding last year. All this information will be squeezed into this guide, which I hope will help you with your wedding.
Chinese Wedding Etiquette
Before any wedding plans can begin, you (as in the bride and groom) must arrange a meeting between both your parents to decide how the wedding date will be chosen and what the dowry will be. The dowry will be paid by the groom and the money must be exchanged before the wedding date. The meeting will also help to establish which chinese wedding traditions you will be following.
See here on How to select your wedding date
Traditionally the Bride and Groom cannot stay together the day before their wedding. They will each have to go back to their parents home or stay with their relatives and friends in a hotel.
The Chinese wedding customs that take place the day before your wedding, might include the combing of the hair which can be viewed here - the combing of the hair. Another chinese wedding tradition is to have a lady with good fortune to set up the bridal bed the night before. Also eating a bowl of tong yuen the night before is meant to signify the start of a new wholesome, complete family.
The chinese wedding traditions we followed
On the day of the wedding, what usually happens is the groom and his hing dai’s will travel to the bride’s home to collect her. Before the groom can get his bride, himself and his hing dai’s will have to endure some chinese wedding door games thought up by the bride’s gee mui’s. In modern day society, the chinese wedding door games are more important now as the harder the tasks, the more it proves that the groom will treasure the bride. Another tradition is that the groom will have to hand the gee mui’s a lai see to enter the house after the games are played. The amount of money is made up by the number 9 and the more 9’s in that figure the better (e.g £9.99, £99 or £999. As the number 9 in Chinese sounds like the word for “long lasting”.
Here are the games that were played at our wedding
A list of more Chinese wedding door games
Even more chinese wedding door games
So after the games, the bride and groom will have the Tea Ceremony with the bride’s family. They will kneel down in front of their elders and serve tea to them whilst addressing them by their formal title proceeding with the oldest family members to the youngest. In return the bride and groom will recieve lucky red envelopes (lai see) with money in them or jewellery. It is traditional for the bride to be dressed in a red kai po for the Tea ceremony but nowadays the bride is usually in her white wedding dress as time as couples now have to fit the wedding ceremony into the day.
As you may have seen in my wedding pictures, when I left my house I was under a red umbrella, this is also a chinese wedding tradition as it is meant to protect me from any evil spirits. Brides will also have to hand out lai see’s to all her younger relatives who are not yet married. It is also customary to hand out lai see’s to anyone who has helped you in your wedding, from your bridesmaids and best men to the hair dresser and chauffer.
Pictures of our chinese wedding banquet
Usually now in modern times, there isn’t enough time in a wedding schedule to go back to the groom’s family house for the tea ceremony so now many people would have the ceremony at the restaurant. This is usually done before the banquet starts. The tea ceremony is the same as the one done at the brides house and the bride should get changed into her kai po at this point.
After the tea cermony, the wedding banquet begins which consists of quite a few dishes including sharks fin soup, roasted suckling pig, steamed fish, lobster etc. Towards the middle course of the banquet, the bride and groom plus the hing dai’s and gee mui’s and also the bride and groom’s family will go round to each table and say cheers with everyone as thanks for coming to the wedding.
I think I have included as many of the chinese wedding traditions as I can think of but I may have missed out quite a few. Maybe some of my readers can reply to this post with the traditions they have included in their wedding.
No related posts.
Comments
3 Responses to “All you need to know about having a Chinese Wedding”
Leave a Comment
Thanks for this guide, it will really help me and my husband in our up and coming wedding next year.
He is Chinese and I am from the Philipines.
Hi Jenny,
Congratulations on your upcoming wedding. I hope everything goes smoothly and I wish you both the best in your married life.
Sally
Hi guys,
Nice site - we’re just looking around and small world - we came across this site and recognised the faces!
We’ve set up a similar blog site too but yours has been insightful and useful.
All the best,
Jason