The Wedding Ceremony

So there was a little confusion about what was going on for Joyce & Patrick's wedding. I thought Joyce had told me she was getting married twice, once in Shanghai & then another ceremony in Taiwan. She invited me to join either ceremony, and since I'm totally in love with Shanghai, I chose to attend that ceremony. Well, what took place wasn't a wedding and I think the closest approximation would be an engagement party. The reason for these two separate ceremonies has do with the restrictions placed on Chinese to visit Taiwan. From what I understand, if your Chinese you cannot easily visit Taiwan unless you have family there. Since Patrick's family are Shanghai-ese, they would not been able to go to Taiwan for the wedding.

There was some sort of the ceremony to the engagement party, but I'm not totally sure what it was all about. Joyce had to sit on this chair while the elder members of her & Patrick's family sat in a row next to her. A man conducting the ceremony brought out this display of a gold jewelry and talked for a while before Patrick came up and started putting some of the jewelry on Joyce. In this photo of Joyce and her mother, you can get a good close-up of some of the jewelry. Both Joyce & Patrick's mother also took turns putting things on Joyce and Joyce even at once point put something on Patrick. I asked Joyce about this and she said it was very traditional to give gold jewerly during wedding ceremonies. The style and size can depend on the region and she mentioned how what they had used was something of a cross between Chinese and Taiwanese traditions (one usually used larger sized jewelry than the other, but I can't remember which one).



After the part with the gold jewelry was done, Joyce & Patrick served tea to the family members who had been sitting in a row to on side (on the left side as seen in the pic below). While the man conducting the ceremony talked for a little while, they all sipped their tea cups then return the tea cup with a red envelope full of money. These red envelopes, 红包 hong bao, are a traditional gifts for Chinese weddings.


When all the tea & hong bao were given to Joyce & Patrick, a few more words were said then we all applauded the new couple. After that, we all sat down and began dinner. Since everything was conducted in Chinese, and I was still jet-lagged and preoccupied with taking photos, I really didn't catch much of what was said. Joyce told me she was going to have a western-style wedding in Taiwan, so I suppose this ceremony I witnessed was more of the traditional Chinese wedding traditions. I wish I had more vacation time and could have gone to Taiwan for the wedding, so that I could see what a Chinese western-style wedding was like. One thing that I have learned from my time in China is that anything that is done "western-style" is still done with a Chinese twist. I noticed this more with food than anything else, but it seems this applies to all cultural traditions that are used in a foreign country.