Hong Kong Weddings

OK, so I'm back. Land of the clear weather, cool tradewinds, and bad traffic.

Let me describe to you the Chinese Wedding experience. I enjoyed myself and it was fun meeting all of my fiancee's friends and relatives, but I'm totally the fish out of water there. I've never even attended a Chinese wedding before...now I'm the center of attention in one. It was weird...many times that night I felt like I was in some weird dream. I think the MC called me on stage a couple times and I was totally oblivious...."OH, you mean ME?" Duh, like who else was getting married?

So anyway, like I had mentioned before, this thing turned into a HUGE thing for my fiancee's family. Since they couldn't come all this way to our ceremony here in Hawaii, we figured we'd give them something to remember there. So my fiancee didn't hold anything back and we had everything from the sea food menu, the big boxes of alcohol (everyone really seems to like red wine in HK for some reason) the slideshows, cakes and MCs.

There are a few really unusual things about their customs. As explained, there were at least 5 dress changes that my fiancee did that night. Along with those dresses meant custom hairstyles for each one & matching jewelry. I concede that she did look quite stunning on most of them. Maybe in a dress or two it may not have been my favorite, but most of the other things she wore that night she looked great.

So picture an event where you have to spend about 20 minutes between each dress change in the span of about 4 hours. For each dress, we had to take photos with friends and family. Apparently, having one picture with us was not enough. If they liked the bride's new dress, they were very eager to take another photo with us.

Most of the night was occupied either taking dozens of photos with giant groups of people, or doing tea ceremonies to each of our close relatives. Chinese tea ceremonies aren't as elaborate as the one I pictured from Karate Kid 2 (thank god). They basically involve the couple having to serve tea to each of the relatives who come to the wedding. You take a cup of tea which is served to us on a platter, then one at a time, the groom first addresses the relative in front of us and says in Chinese, "Uncle so-and-so, please drink tea", "Aunt so-and-so, please drink tea". Then the bride does the same thing.

The relative receives the tea, says some kind of blessing back to you and then gives each of the couple a lucky Li Si packet. You say thank you, they go back to dinner and then another relative sits down and you do the same routine again. So a good part of the event I was serving tea to and endless line of aunts and uncles I had just met.

The scary part was that I didn't know their names. In chinese, every aunt and uncle has a name that addresses them specifically depending on a number of things. Whether they come from the mother's side or father's side, how old they are in relation to your mother or father, how old or young they are in relation to you, yadda yadda. You can't just do like we do in Hawaii and call everyone "Braddah", "Uncle" and "Aunty"

So before each relative, Florence and her younger sister would quietly tell me how to address the person in front of me so I could say my part and serve the tea. Well, a couple times I didn't hear them....so I did what every proper groom would do in this situation. I mumbled their names.

"Uncle MMmsmmmemmph, Please drink tea" It seemed to work well enough.

Weddings in HK are also very boisterous. When I had the chance to talk to our MC once, she explained to me that in these types of weddings it's different from the West because the people like to be very noisy. If you can't imagine Chinese people being any noisier then they usually are in the restaurants, well....they can be. There's a lot of alcohol being consumed, a lot of toasting, a lot of participation and cheering. One of the games we had involved the MC going to each of the tables with a decibel meter and challenging them to scream the loudest in the room. "100 years of love, both hearts join as one"

One table screamed so loud one of the champaign glasses broke.

I don't think I've had to be in so many photos in my life. I think by the later part of the night my jaw hurt...my smile probably looked more like a grimace then a smile. I should have just drawn a smile on my face it would have been easier on the lips.

In the end, it was fun. I think everyone enjoyed themselves and I think the both of us was happy when it was over as well. I certainly felt a lot closer to her family after this event. So I'm glad we went through it.