Hong Kong Wedding

Chinese Wedding

Several Weeks ago Nate and I were invited to our first Hong Kong wedding. When Nate lived in Beijing he attended a Chinese wedding there and was quite excited for this event. We were invited from one of my co-workers, a teacher we call Ms. Chan Chan.

We received a beautiful red invitation with gold writing, all in Chinese of course. I had to ask another teacher what it said so we knew where to go! Instead of a wedding reception they have a wedding banquet, which is essentially the same thing. Included in the invitation was a small envelope containing a crisp $10 HKD as well as a gift certificate for a small Maxim's cake. Now, I will say that most of the bakeries in Hong Kong do bread and rolls very well but fall short when it comes to desserts. Maxim's has amazing treats!

It is customary for a guest of a banquet to give between $500-1000 HKD in a red packet. This is approximately $65-130 American Dollars. Nate's coworker gave him the appropriate red packet for us to put the money in for the banquet. The banquet started at 8:00pm. Some guest show up between 7:30-8:00pm to take pictures with the bride and groom.

We arrived shortly after 8:00 with one of my coworkers. When we arrived most people were seated in a very large banquet room. Upon arrival we saw some previously taken photographs of the couple. Ms. Chan Chan was wearing a beautiful white wedding gown with an amazing head piece. These pictures were taken at the beach. I knew she had a total of 5 dresses so I was excited to see them all! She had a traditional (well, what we Americans think of traditional) white dress, a traditional Chinese red silk dress (we did not see either of these in person, these were dresses worn before and seen in the pictures and videos) another white dress she wore as her entrance to the banquet gown, a yellow ball gown style dress and her favorite, a turquoise beaded dress. She looked stunning in all of the dresses.

Before dinner we were treated to a video and slide show. The music was 98 degrees (you know, 90's and 2000's boy band!) "I Do". It was perfect. They showed a slide show of pictures of both bride and groom growing up. They had a video from earlier that day of the bride and groom going over to different members of the families' homes. They said a prayer for lots of money in their red packets (we had a lovely woman sitting next to us who was kind enough to translate). There was what we would call a maid of honor and best man emceeing the event. Both bride and groom did a little speech on stage as well. I have to say that Ms. Chan Chan looked petrified!

Dinner and drinks were served. There was unlimited beer, wine or juice. This was exciting for us! The red wine was good and the beer was cans of Heinekin! I am very proud to say I tried a bite of everything even things I didn't want to. We had suckling pork which tasted like pork grinds so I did NOT like those. We had some wontons with egg whites inside which were ok. We had some yummy potato balls and also crab balls. Both were delicious. Shrimp was served which was also delicious. They serviced Abalone which is expensive and I thought it was slimy and gross. They had baked fish which I ate, including a bite of the cheek. They served shark fin soup which Nate was upset about. Look it up if you so desire. I'm told that they catch the shark, cut it's fin, then throw it back into the water. The shark either drowns or is eaten by other animals in the water. For dessert they had bowls of oranges and jello with chrysanthemum flowers crunched up inside.

During the meal the family comes around to talk to each table. It was a very nice experience. We were not sitting with the two tables of my coworkers so we went to speak with both tables. It was so nice to see them outside of our work uniforms. Nate was the hit of the night. All my coworkers kept commenting on how handsome he is and how he looks like a movie star. Of course, Nate loved it! I had read about this before we went to the wedding but it was still quite a site nonetheless. At the end of the night everybody just gets up and leaves, just like that! All of a sudden we were chatting and BOOM everybody stands up and leaves. We were called to the stage to take pictures with the bride and groom.

It was a very fun night! There were so many similarities among a Hong Kong wedding and an "American" or Western wedding reception. We look forward to being invited to another wedding soon!