Wedding Weekend

http://picasaweb.google.com/s/c/bin/slideshow.swfMy friend’s wedding was an interesting affair for me. It’s only the second church wedding that I’ve been to in my life, and it’s the very first Chinese church wedding that I’ve been to. So, there were many interesting bits of it.

The day started with Ray picking me up from my hostel and driving over to church. When we arrived, he went on to set up the video camera as he was the designated video man for the day. I was being a busy body and helping him a bit. Then, a guy came over to ask Ray a few questions. After that the guy looked at me, and the conversation went something like this:

Random guy: (staring oddly at me) Who are you?
Me: Hi, I’m Shawn, a friend of the bride’s.
Random guy: (looking surprised) Oh, I’ve never met you before.
Me: Yea, I’m a friend from College.
Random guy: Hi, I’m the groom.
Me: (looking exceedingly embarrassed) Oh! Congratulations!

Pretty silly right? And throughout this time, Ray was standing right next to us and not saying anything! I have never met the groom before and I don’t know how he looks like. When I asked Ray earlier, which was the groom, Ray told me that he was the best dressed guy. Incidentally, the groom is Ray’s cousin. Well, that’s just so Ray.

Soon after that, the bride arrived and the ceremony started. The ceremony itself was pretty interesting. The groom was from Edinburgh, and spoke Cantonese. The bride was from China, and spoke Mandarin. When they took their vows, they both did it in their own language, Cantonese and Mandarin. I found that rather curious especially since they struggled a bit with the extremely formal form of the language. It is your typical “till death to us part” kind of vow. And a comical bit happened when the groom forgot to remove the veil, which he promptly fixed when reminded.

Another interesting bit was the hymn singing during the ceremony. As I do not know any of the hymns, I usually try to just follow along. The music is usually quite simple to follow. So, I just wanted to make sure that I was singing the right parts. But when I tried to listen to the singing, I couldn’t catch which parts everyone else was singing. After a while, I realised why. Most of the congregation was singing in Chinese, while I was trying to discern the English lyrics!

I believe that the thing that sets this ceremony apart from regular church weddings is the bowing. After they were declared man and wife, they took three bows. One to the family of the groom, one to the family of the bride, and the last to everyone present. In return everyone bowed back. So, there was a lot of bowing involved, which makes it a very East Asian kind of ceremony.

Although Ray and I had agreed to get them a gift together, he went on and got them something on his own. So, I was left stranded and had to do the traditional thing of just giving them a red-packet. Thing was, Ray forgot to bring me a red-packet either. So, I had to scrounge around my bags for an old decrepit piece of angpow. Well, as long as it’s red and it contained money, I guess. And I gave it to the bride when I spoke to her after the ceremony.

After the ceremony, there was some lunch, prepared by the members of the church. Damn, it was good authentic Chinese food. I’ve not had such nice stuff in ages. So, I made sure that I had a good helping of everything: dimsum, pau, zhang, ribs, rice, noodles. Everything. Then, there was a photo session outside, with the wedding couple. This took a long time as people had to queue up to get their photos taken. After that, people made their way off.

Some people then went off to the wedding banquet for dinner. I went off to town, to visit the National Portrait Gallery. I never thought that a gallery of peoples’ faces could be so interesting. Then, I caught the bus to the airport and flew back to Cambridge.

PS: The bride’s gown is very elegant. She makes a very beautiful bride.