Chinese Wedding Customs
June is around and well, sakalan,..errr kasalan, is everywhere. This
celebration of love and unity is performed in different cultures with
different traditions and customs. The Chinese having a rich culture has
an elaborate and festive way of tying the knot.
Here are some of the traditions that make up a Chinese wedding. See if
you can fit some or all the traditions in the modern day setting.
Customs may vary from different clans, regions and localities. Some of
my sources did not include the exact region of these customs.
Bethrothal
The parents of the bride and the groom formally meet today. The female's
family picks an auspicious date from the suggested dates of the male's
family. Auspicious days are subject to interpretation by fortunetellers
that perform the analysis based on one's birth date (day and hour) after
consultation with the Chinese almanac. The 15 day period from the middle
to the end of the seventh lunar month is considered inauspicious because
that is time of the Hungry Ghost Festival when the gates of Hell are
opened and the lost spirits are allowed to wonder the earth. Usually the
whole seventh lunar month is considered inauspicious.
The male's family will present the betrothal gifts which includes tea,
dragon bridal cake and phoenix bridal cake, wine, pairs of male and
female poultry, sweetmeats and sugar. In extremely rich families, they
even send out jewelry. Tea is a primary part of these gifts.
Pre-Wedding
Giving out invitations is a must for every wedding. But the Chinese
really does it with style. They send out Double Happiness cakes to the
close friends and relatives to announce their wedding.Along with these
cakes comes an invitation printed on red paper. Those who received it
must give them a congratulatory gift on the wedding day.
Another pre-wedding ritual is installing the bridal bed probably for the
couples first night together. A respected relative considered a good
luck man or good luck woman, one man or women with many children and
living mates will install the bed. Installing the bed means moving the
bed slightly or putting the bed cover and the pillows. Once the bed is
installed, children( as many as you want) are asked to play on the bed.
Later on they will scatter red dates, pomegranates and other fruits.
Wedding Day
Wedding day for a Chinese custom, is equally tiring as of a western
culture. The female has to bath in water infused with pomelo skin or
peelings or leaves, to cleanse her of the bad things. Then a good luck
woman will come to help dressing up the bride's hair. The woman should
also speak auspicious words while tying up her hair in a bun, a style of
married woman. The female's face will be covered with either a red silk
veil or a 'curtain' of tassels or beads that hung from the bridal
Phoenix crown. For the males, a capping ritual is done. The male will
kneel at the family altar while his father placed a cap decorated with
cypress leaves on his head. They will set up the bridal sedan chair to
pick up the bride along with the relatives and friends.
The festive procession of picking up the bride includes firecrackers and
loud gongs. The groom led the procession accompanied by a child as an
omen of his future sons, and attendants with lanterns and banners,
musicians, and a 'dancing' lion or unicorn followed the bridal sedan
chair.
Upon arriving at the bride's house they have to perform the door game.
Simply means that the friends of the bride will not let her go and the
groom has to either trick them or buy them off.
In some cases, the groom would take dinner with the bride's family, and
receive a pair of chopsticks and two wine goblets wrapped in red paper,
symbolic of his receiving the joy of the family in the person of their
daughter. In some regions, he would be offered sweet longan tea, two
hard-boiled eggs in syrup and transparent noodles. Another variation was
the groom's partaking of soup with a soft-boiled egg, the yolk of which
he was expected to break, arguably symbolic of breaking the bride's ties
with her family
The 'good luck woman' carried the bride on her back to the sedan chair.
Another attendant might shield the bride with a parasol while a third
tossed rice at the sedan chair. Shocking as it may sound, it is written
that the bride cannot touch the bare earth. Great care was taken to
ensure that no inauspicious influence would affect the marriage. The
female attendants were chosen with particular care that the horoscope
animals of their birth years were compatible with that of the
bridegroom. The sedan chair was heavily curtained so that the bride may
avoid seeing unlucky things.
The wedding ceremony only takes about a few minutes with the bride and
the groom going to the family altar. They pay homage to the Heaven and
Earth, the family ancestors and then to their parents. The groom's
parents are offered with tea with two lotus seeds or dates in the cup.
After they bowed the ceremony is over. In some other rituals, where both
also drank wine from the same goblet, ate sugar molded in the form of a
rooster, and partook of the wedding dinner together.
Wedding banquet
Of course, food is one thing present in all occasions. The Chinese
wedding banquet usually consists of fish, roast suckling pig, pigeon,
chicken cooked in red oil, lobster and desert bun with lotus seeds
stuffed inside. Each dish represents a significant wish for the young
couple. The fish sounds like 'yu' which means abundance. The roast
suckling pig symbolizes bride's purity. Pigeon implies peaceful future
while the chicken which also means 'phoenix' cooked in red oil
symbolizes a wish for a good life while the lobster .The lobster is
literally called 'dragon shrimp ' in Chinese. The lobster and chicken is
a yin yang and represents a balance that must be met like the marriage
of man and woman.
Getting married was never easy in every culture. All preparations and
cooperation from both sides are needed. There is chaos,
miscommunication, panic, almost everything can happen between the
preparations and the wedding day itself. But amidst of this all, a
wedding, whether Chinese or Filipino, American or African, is a symbol
of unity and harmony that man and a woman is bound to. It is, as
cliché as it may sound, a celebration of love that will last forever.
Source: FilChi.org
Just wanted to share this things to you guys, it just shows how Chinese culture and tradition are that complicated
