Lily's Wedding

We were invited to a Chinese wedding party this Sunday. When a Chinese couple gets married, the actual marriage takes place at a government office with just the bride and groom attending. It has to be on a good day according to the lunar calendar. The party, too, has to be on a good day according to that calendar (not the Gregorian calendar). One of Tim's coworkers who was there said she got married but they didn't have the party until over a year later because the year in between wasn't a good year to get married.

The party was in a city north of Shenzhen, and has a much smaller foreign population - we received many stares from people in other vehicles.

When you walk into the venue, the bride is there to greet you (she had on a beautiful white dress, gloves and veil) along with a few friends/relatives who carried silver trays. The trays were for little red envelopes, the traditional gift of choice for weddings (filled with cash, of course). Then we walked into the party room where tables were set with red cloths, bowls of peanuts and candy, and two packs of cigarettes on each table.

We found a table and sat down, and were served tea even though we were the first ones there. We relaxed and listened to various songs such as "auld lang syne", "Happy Birthday", and some traditional Chinese music. People began arriving and finding a seat. Finally the bridal procession entered - a wedding cake (very small) on a cart, followed by a wedding performer/MC guy, then the bride and groom, and then some friends with big Chinese crackers that shot out confetti and streamers with a bang. The groom then picked up the bride and paraded her around the room so each table could get a good look at her. They walked up to a platform where speeches were given - in this case, by each of their bosses. Since they are both from different towns, they had already had two parties in each of those towns with their relatives. After speeches and some jokes and nice words from the MC guy (who would normally, I believe, be a friend of the couple), they had a ring ceremony. I suppose I don't need to add that I had no idea what any of the speakers was saying, except for Lily's American boss. The woman next to me explained that it was mostly about how they met and about them as a couple.

Then they cut the heart-shaped cake in half but did not eat any. After that they had champagne in two cups that were tied together with a red ribbon, and poured some champagne into a cup on top of a tower of cups. The MC guy poured that cup into two cups underneath it and they each drank from one of those.

After that, the bride left to change into a beautiful reddish tulle dress - sort of a vermillion color, I guess. It was gorgeous and she looked like a princess. So much so that Ella was terrified of her because she is terrified of any Disney character including Alice in Wonderland and the Princesses. But, I digress.

Chinese meals are served family-style, with a big lazy susan in the middle of the table, and you just grabe what you want with the chopsticks for each dish and put it on your plate. We had a delicious meal of broth soup, fish balls with oysters, mushroom and braised lettuce leaves in gravy, stewed ginger chicken, shrimp (which the Chinese eat whole - head and shell and all, then they spit out the shells), grilled pork (usually sliced, with a lot of fat and skin around very tender meat), cashew chicken (which was REALLY good), fried rice, and whole grilled fish. The other people at the table looked at me funny when I peeled my shrimp and took off the head with my chopsticks - the woman next to me even showed me how to just pop the whole thing in....ummmmm, no thanks. I also didn't try the fish balls because I had a hard time with the smell, but everything else was really, really good. The kids even ate really well. While we ate, the bride and groom visited each table for a toast and a welcome.

Then they served a plate of sweets - little egg custard tarts, which Alex loved, and these sticky rice pastries filled with sweet black sesame seed paste. These were really, really really good! After that came the usual dessert of a huge tray of cut fresh fruit. It was really good - we had star fruit, apples, oranges, melon, watermelon, and grapes.

After that, it was done and we headed back to Shenzhen and a very light supper because we were still so full!