Traditional Chinese Wedding Preparations

There are many traditional Chinese customs for a wedding. The younger or new generations getting married are begging their parents to forego some of these traditions because it seems cumbersome and a lot of work. Some of the older generations are standing firm on these customs because they believe only with doing these traditions will the bride and groom have a happy and prosperous life together. So what do you do when both generations are not willing to back down? You compromise. This blog post is separated into two sections. First is for the bride and groom to read, second for the parents.

Young Generation of Brides and Grooms
For the younger generations, your push back against these traditions may be because of your lack of understanding of the significance of the traditions. Here are some easy infographics to help you understand the ins and outs of Traditional Chinese Wedding Preparations.







Behance

Older Generations - Parents
Times are changing and you have to grow with the modern times. If you want your children to embrace the old traditions, allow them the flexibility to put their modern take on it. Here are some ways that you can keep your traditions but in an updated way.


 Tamiz Photography

My Big Fat Traditional Chinese Wedding (Part 2)

If you missed part one of Gail and Erik's wedding story, you can read it here. 

I decided on Chinese flavours for our wedding cake, taro and green tea. It was most important for me that the bakery understood my wedding vision. I know I needed the double happiness character but more importantly I had to look around for a bakery that was willing to do a 3D gold dragon and phoenix which would wrap around the entire cake. In a traditional Chinese wedding, the night of the wedding, the bridal room would lit dragon and phoenix candles to drive away evil spirits. This was a Chinese version of unity candle so I knew I wanted candles to go with my theme. Since it had a dragon and phoenix on the candle, we lit and placed them on the cake table as accents.

All of my wedding dresses were Chinese traditional red color wedding dresses. During the tea ceremony I had the “kwa.” I changed into a phoenix red long train mermaid dress during dim sum and cocktail hours. For the grand entrance I went into a very vibrant Chinese pattern modern mermaid tulle dress.

During the toasting I special ordered tea cups and changed into a beautiful red and laced gold “qi piao” and the final dress was a modern mermaid style red qi piao. To match my traditional red dresses I wanted traditional Chinese hair pieces that the Chinese empress would normally wear. I got a lot of gold pieces to accent the red colors and in shapes of butterflies, phoenixes and gold flowers. Because I had six dress changes, I wanted my bridesmaid to have a dress change too. I wanted to keep the same theme and did not want to go with a western style dress, so I ordered the tang style Chinese dresses for them to wear in both red and gold. And of course lets not forget shoes! I had four pairs of shoes all Chinese red styles and even a pair of red slippers with the characters “lao pao” and “lao gong”. Meaning wife and husband.

Erik he had the traditional Chinese long dress to match my “kwa” for the tea ceremoney and in the evening he changed into a Bruce Lee kung foo style outfit. Erik's outfit had red and gold dragons while his groomsman wore the black and gold dragons. They all had matching black dragon pants and black toms because I thought they looked like the “heu” in the olden Chinese kung fu styles.

Overall, I loved every moment of my wedding and felt like the details worked out immaculately. I felt that the décor really did bring my vision to life. I am looking forward to planning and having a 10 year anniversary wedding reception dinner now!

My Big Fat Traditional Chinese Wedding (Part 1)

I met Gail over a decade ago and have always been fascinated by all the places she travels to...in one year. She is quite a world traveler. I've always wondered who she would find to be her other half, because this person would have to be able to (literally) keep up with her as she travels. Erik is the love of her life and below is their wedding story. 

~Monica Hui
Owner, Lead Planner and Designer
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Guest Blogger and Recent Bride: Gail Kwan

Coming from a Chinese heritage and having attended many weddings growing up, I always knew I wanted mine to be big, red and grand. I wanted to embrace my heritage. Most of the Chinese weddings I've seen always have the dragon and phoenix. For the Chinese, dragon symbolizes the emperor and phoenix symbolizes the empress. These two popular celestial animals are regarded as a perfect couple in Feng Shui. The dragon represents the Yang (or the male) and the phoenix represents the Yin (or the female). The dragon-phoenix symbol is created for the hope that the couple's love and passion will last till the end and they will stay together through thick and thin. Therefore it was imperative for my wedding to have these two symbol displayed in my wedding. 

Another thing I know I needed for my big fat Chinese wedding is the color red. Red is the color for Chinese weddings. This auspicious hue represents luck, happiness and joy - all the things that make for a great wedding and marriage!

Prior to the tea ceremony we had typical door ceremony games and a big roast pig for lunch. As I was telling my bridesmaid and my friends about my vision for the wedding everyone thought it was funny and laughed at the idea. I was persistent and refused to change my mind. After the tea ceremony we went around to take pictures, then we had a dim sum buffet and cocktail hour. After all the eating, we went on to our wedding reception. The only thing I felt was missing was a wedding carriage for the grand entrance. Erik refused to let me have it saying it was silly.

My mentality has always been to “go big or to go home.” Therefore, I wanted a big grand wedding that was different. I thought about my theme and watched endless Chinese olden days chapter movies and noticed all festivities and celebrations involves lanterns.  Lanterns are also thought to hold good luck as well. I ended up buying 60 lanterns to hang inside the Chinese Cultural Center which would also act as the table’s centerpieces, just floating above the center of the table. 

I wanted to have a soft ambient lighting, so we decided to hang lights inside of the lanterns to give it a soft glowing ambiance. Of course, for the grand entrance we wanted a red tunnel to lead into the room as if you were walking back into the olden days Chinese wedding. We had Chinese red patterned chair covers for all the reception chairs. To further symbolize our love, we had a Chinese love knot which we hung above the head table. As well, we had a four foot tall “double happiness” character in the center of the stage and our family names represented as well as the celestial dragon and phoenix.

I initially wanted to order Chinese happiness/wedding red bowls, red plates, tea cups and red chopsticks for all my 350 wedding guests. This was to avoid the white typical bowls and cups you normally get at restaurants but Erik put his foot down and said no. So we compromised and only had the special red Chinese wedding sets for the head table. For our party favors what else would be more fitting than Chinese chopsticks with the happiness character. 

Check out part two of Gail and Erik's wedding story!