Chinese Wedding

Chinese Wedding
I twice worked as a wedding receptionist in recent years. Because of those experiences, I got the chance to know the marriage customs in Taiwan. I found Chinese wedding is one of the great symbols of its long history that contains courtesy, superstition, and culture.
My major job in the wedding was receiving red envelopes, counting the gift money right in the presence of the guests, and writing the amount of money on the specific cash books and writing thank-you cards, which contains the amount and the guests’ name. This job was easy but important because the family will check it frequently. In fact, they have to return the same amount of money to their guests someday when there is wedding, engagement, or funeral in their family. This is kind of feedback; returning less is not a sin but it is pretty impolite. Besides, the engagement feast must be held by the bride-to-be’s family and they invite the all of the bride’s relatives, friends, but the bridegroom can invite his family only; wile the wedding feast is contrariwise. This might be a strange custom but the purpose is to assure that nobody would deliver the red envelope twice to the same couple. Moreover, the dowry is very important subject in Chinese wedding because each item has different meaning behind it. It concludes too many objects to explain every detail so I just choose something special, such as the leading chicken. It is a delicate chicken that made of plastics or bead, some expensive ones even made of crystals or gold. Putting the leading chicken in the table of the living room, it is said can bring good luck to the family especially good to their careers. Besides, the bride has to prepare red night gown and traditional underwear for herself and her husband because red is a lucky color in Taiwan. Furthermore, the bride’s family will splash some water while the wedding car is setting out to the couple’s house. It is a metaphor that a married daughter is similar to the water that can never return to her parents’ home. It might sounds strange but it is an important point in Chinese tradition. At the same time, the bride will throw a fan from the car window as a symbol of goodness for ‘fan” and “goodness” have the same pronunciation in Chinese. Finally, in to the tradition, “warming bed”- asking a boy to leap on the bed before the wedding night, is regarded a blessing for the couple. It is said that they will have children soon after the wedding.
Knowing the customs of Chinese wedding helps me to understand our tradition further. Because of those experiences, I found our culture is pretty valuable and unique. While some wedding customs might be old-fashioned and anachronistic, they are precious experiences and wisdom that our ancestors handed down to us. Every custom has a unique meaning behind it. No matter it is suitable for modern society or not, it is part of our cultural treasure.