Taipei Part V: The Wedding
Refreshed after our shower, Kevin and I met a bunch of his other relatives (including two very cute but very shy children) before heading out with A-ma and Kevin's cousin Shelly for the wedding. Traditional Chinese and Taiwanese weddings can vary sepending on one's religion, but in general they are shorter -- and certainly quite unique from -- traditional Western ceremonies. Typically, the most important ceremonies (which often involve various symbolic exchanges between the bride and groom and their two families) take place before the main reception.
The main event, to which everyone else is invited, is usually a big banquet with a dizzying number of courses all meant to symbolize fertility, new beginnings, and many fruitful and harmonious years for the two newlyweds. Kevin's family and I were lucky enough to be seated right up by the stage in the banquet hall, next to the pianist, so we had a pretty good idea of what was going on for most of the ceremonies and presentations during the banquet.
Several videos were shown -- one about the bride and groom and how they met, another about the legal marriage ceremony (which I think had taken place earlier in the day at a sort of mass wedding ceremony in front of a judge) -- all beautifully edited and accompanied by romantic music. The bridge and groom read their vows to each other, and the bridge kept leaving and coming back into the room wearing different dresses. Balloons were distributed to special friends, songs were sung by close relatives, ceremonial "shots" of tea were drunk with each table, and there was even a flamenco dancer on hand to provide entertainment when the ceremonial events began to wane.
The date of the wedding -- 07-07-07 -- was chosen as an especially auspicious date for marriage. (Amy and I have often wondered why HP 5 and HP 7 were released on the 11th and 21st respectively, instead of on the 7th). In what is (according to Shelly) a growing trend among engaged couples in Taiwan and some places in China, these newlyweds had dropped a small fortune on romantic photos of themselves, which played in a slideshow on the stage whenever nothing else was going on. (This article has some information about this growing practice, as well as a number of other facts about weddings in Taiwan).
All in all, it was a unique and exciting experience. As we left, Kevin was assailed by one of the photographers, who began quizzing him about his Taiwanese (language) skills. After Kevin admitted that he could speak Mandarin but not the native Taiwanese language, the photographer jerked his head at me. "What about her?" he asked Kevin. "I can also speak some Mandarin, but no Taiwanese," I told him in Chinese. He looked startled, to say the least, and began grinning and taking pictures of us. For a few seconds I almost felt like I was back in China again, as photographers suddenly began to cluster, snapping photo after photo as Shelly and A-ma watched on bemusedly from the side. Finally, we escaped to the warm air outside and hailed a taxi home to begin the next stage of the day's adventures.
posted by Kelly @ 6:04 PM
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