My Big Fat Guangdong Wedding

How much was the certificate itself? I'm trying to find info online but can't find much! I've heard it's really cheap for Chinese, but if a foreigner's involved they jack the price up..

If I were to get married again, heng, I would probably hire my friend David for photos because the studio workers all a bunch of idiots and the prices are just a waste of money.

And I would travel around China for the photo shoot.

you take on the experience re-opened my eyes. that was not a fun experience.

i was thinking of doing some betazoid type marriage

How much was the certificate itself? I'm trying to find info online but can't find much! I've heard it's really cheap for Chinese, but if a foreigner's involved they jack the price up..

The certificate from the US Consulate cost me $50.  Between the website and phone recordings, I'd seen/heard prices of $30, $40, and $50.  Nice to see how good they are at keeping these things up to date.

The Chinese marriage certificate cost me the princely sum of exactly 9 RMB. 

I don't know if other provinces charge more or not.

i was thinking of doing some betazoid type marriage

I attempted to convince a few of my female friends that all guests would need to be dressed up in Betazoid style.  Sadly, they didn't fall for it.

Chapter 12:  Double Happiness needs a Double Party

We dragged out of bed early on Saturday morning.  Yaaay!  We're married!   Oh no, we've got two parties to throw today.

The hotel had a breakfast buffet, so that was one less issue to worry about.  Cantonese Twin 2 showed up just after with her Mary Kay bag to attack my darling's face with an inch thick coating of assorted stuff.  Then Cantonese Twin #1 (aka Scooter Girl) showed up to get her face done while my darling went to the hair saloon next door to the hotel entrance.  Her parents took our darling daughter across the street to the Carrefour building to have her hair done at one of those places that sells over-priced hair clips and promises to do your hair up with them for free at any time (and always wants to sell you new hair clips since the ones you bought last week are now out of style).

I then got a phone call from my darling.  "I need to talk.  Can she hear you?"  I retreated to the farthest corner of the suite.  "I hate the makeup she put on me.  If I take it off, will she be offended?"  I told her to blame the hair saloon for ruining the makeup, returned to the front room, and generously suggested that Cantonese Twin 2 could leave that big heavy makeup bag in the suite so that she wouldn't have to carry it around - thus giving my darling a chance to redo the makeup to her own liking.  I then had the twins help me carry all the clothing, candy, gold jewelry, and other assorted items over to the restaurant.

We carried all the stuff into the VIP banquet room that had been reserved.  Workers were busily arranging the tables.  The person in charge (via the translation of my twins) seemed blissfully unaware of the initial discussions with one manager and the discussions with another manager the night before.  He was convinced that the clothing would be changed in and stored in the smaller VIP room (the one that smelled like an overused stale ashtray ).  The workers were planning on using the changing room in my VIP room to shove the dirty dishes into (completely ignoring the separate alcove that was obviously designed for this purpose ).  Happily, since Twin 2 had been there the night before, I told her to re-explain reality to the guy in charge and to say that there would be absolutely ZERO changes from the agreed on plan.

Happily, no one on the staff was ready to deal with the wrath of a crazy foreigner backed by 2 loyal and potentially vicious local girls, so they caved in pretty easily.  Naturally, after I'd wasted 20 minutes getting everything back to just like had been agreed with the manager the night before, the manager walks in.  She seemed pleased that everything was going exactly according to plan.

There still were some minor setup issues.  Thankfully, my lovely bride arrived and managed to straighten out most of the last few items.  We then changed our clothing (her into a white dress from the wedding studio, me into my Mao suit - temporarily minus jacket since winter finally gave up about 4 days earlier) and headed up to the front of the restaurant to greet our guests.  This left her parents and another dear friend from her hometown (the lovely and talented woman who first introduced us) in charge of the banquet room.

We had 8 seats available at the head table.  Me, my darling bride, our lovely daughter, and her parents took up 5.  There was some talk of fitting in her uncle's family, but that would have been 5 more into 3 places.  I also mentioned that none of my US family could make it, but that I counted some of my dearest Chinese friends as sisters and brothers.  Our dear friend who introduced us got place #6 and the Cantonese Twins took places 7 and 8.

The Twins and my little Bluebird of Despair had a table just inside the restaurant entrance to handle gifts, signing in guests, handing out bags of wedding candy, etc.  We stood just outside the entrance beside the wedding poster from the photo studio.  I had a camera just across the doorway from us set up and used a remote to take pics of us and the guests as they arrived.

The universe was kind and decided to rebalance some of the karma from all the issues on Friday (either that or I'd left less options for Murphy to take advantage of my official Family Curse this time).  Guests arrived, most within the 30 minutes we'd allotted, and no other massive issues arose.  Just after 12:30, we moved everything from the front of the restaurant and went back to the banquet room.  I slipped in for a moment, set the camera to video mode, and parked it at the front of the room, pointed down the red carpet towards the entrance doors, and ran back out.  While I tried not to sweat too much during the 2 minutes I'd need to wear the jacket, our darling daughter went into the room and introduced us in English and Mandarin.  We came in, crossed a predetermined line on the floor, and the confetti cannons . . . didn't fire.  The safeties were still on and there was a bit of a struggle to arm them.  Finally, 4 non-sequential pops happened and we got a nice coating of metal foil (a guest's son had nailed us with one at the front of the restaurant earlier - that one was all paper).

We greeted the crowd and our daughter took back one of the microphones and asked everyone to wait a moment.  We then retreated to the changing room, switched into our traditional red outfits, and came out again.  This time, crossing the pre-determined trigger line worked a little better and the confetti cannons went off mostly at the right moment.

The ceremony was conducted by our darling daughter in Mandarin and English.  We'd intended to do the rings first, but our daughter hadn't noted that change on her draft copy of the script, so I ended up kissing the bride first.  Somehow the safeties got stuck again, since the next round of confetti was supposed to happen 3 seconds into the kiss.  After a few seconds too long, I looked up to see some consultations going on regarding one of the safeties, then they all opened fire.  I took the opportunity to grab a second kiss as the foil rained down over us.  We then exchanged the rings and went back to the table with all the alcohol , cigarettes , and cake (that table just needed a slot machine and a stripper to get a complete set of vices into one place ).  We cut the cake, I opened a bottle of champagne, and poured 2 glasses.  We then stepped forward, thanked our guests again for attending, raised our glasses to toast them, and then intertwined our arms to drink the champagne as the final round of confetti went off (at the correct moment).  By this point, the confetti was ankle-deep in a few places and we were both covered with it.  In a statement that would have been very strange under any other circumstances, I leaned over to my beautiful bride and whispered, "I'm all shiny and sparkly."   I think I ended up drinking some of the metal foil.

A buffet for a wedding has some advantages.  You only pay per person, not per table.  There are no delays waiting for food to come out.  There's one BIG disadvantage if it's your wedding.  You can't easily get to the food without getting stopped for pictures, toasts, and general chat.  I figured that this would happen, so planned ahead and had eaten more than usual for breakfast.

My biggest worry with such a large guest list was getting embarrassed one way or another.  If too many people showed up, the room would get too crowded.  If too few showed up, I'd look not just like an idiot, but like an unpopular idiot.   The room was set with 84 places and there were 66 people in attendance.  That worked out just about perfectly.

The head of my local charity group and almost all of the board of directors attended.  Amy, the girl I bungee jumped off a mountain to impress attended (I'd only seen her that one time before and she's married now, but she still showed up).  My police/security buddies from DragonBoat racing attended. A dozen or so other villagers attended.  All but a tiny handful of my dearest Chinese friends attended.

No foreigners were in attendance, but the groom had suspiciously non-Chinese looking hair and eyes.

We made the rounds and toasted each group.  I'd previously grabbed a large glass, filled it mostly with Sprite, and poured a little baijiu in on top, both to kill the bubbles and to convince anyone who sniffed the glass of the authenticity of its contents (one party mostly taken care of, but I still had one to go).

As we began winding things down, Scooter Girl was eating yet another plate of food (I think no one feeds her when she's not in Dongguan).  I found one remaining unfired confetti cannon and showered her with foil.  Guess I'll have to buy a few more to do midnight confetti assaults in the village.

My initial plan was to not set any alcohol on the tables, just to have people go back and get it from the drinks cigs, and cake bar at the back of the room.  Some helpful person at the restaurant set out a wine glass (50/50 mix of wine/Sprite - China's greatest contribution to international wine culture ) at each place setting.  This, combined with the party being at lunch time ended up resulting in far less alcohol being consumed that we'd planned for.  Only 3 bottles of baijiu and less than 6 bottles of wine were consumed.  Happily, the otherwise incompetent place that sold us the baijiu does take returns of unopened cases, so 2 cases can go back.  I'll be bringing a bottle or two of red wine to any village dinner parties for the next couple of months.

Someone must have liked the cigarettes .  I only saw a few smoked in the room, but both cartons were empty by the end of the party.

Finally, we ended the lunch.  With a number of friends, we hauled the remaining alcohol down to someone's car to ship back to my house in the village.  My wife and her family needed to buy something (Advice - always hold your wedding next to a couple of super-centers ), so I ended up carrying stuff back to the hotel with some friends before heading over to KTV.

I really have to wonder what the hotel clerks thought.  They saw me come in and out with my bride several times.  Then in and out with one or both Cantonese Twins, with and without my bride.  Now I was leading in 3 guys and a different girl in (the Twins had gone ahead to KTV).  Ah well, I might as well give people things to speculate about.

Finally, I arrived at KTV (only a 2-3 minute walk from the hotel) and my lovely wife and our darling daughter arrived a few minutes later.  The room could handle 50+, but we only ended up with 25-30.  As usual, Twin #2, ScooterGirl, had maxed out the volume of both the music and the microphones. .  I'd figured out the song selection controls at this KTV during my birthday party well enough to find English language songs by title, but am still working on the other items.

I decided to test the range of Chinese hearing during the chorus to Yesterday Once More by pushing my voice up past Helium-sucking Alvin and the Chipmonk's style into the edge of the range of "Only audible to dogs."  I believe I was successful in damaging a few people's ears.   A couple of my former coworkers from the Translation Center did pretty well in duets with me on some other songs in English.

Happily, there was some slow dance music, so I did get to dance with my bride a little.  Then some thoughtful person loaded up some disco and I sat down and was quite . . . pleased to see how amazingly well a number of the girls could dance.

Finally, the party wound down.  I left the Twins and a couple of others still singing (the room was reserved until 7) and went out to dinner with my wife, daughter, and the in-laws before dragging ourselves back to the hotel.  Our room had little bits of metal foil confetti everywhere from things brought back from the lunch and other pieces falling off of our hair and clothing.

Just as we were laying down for the night, my darling bride remarked "We survived it!"  I think she was asleep before her head hit the pillow.

The honeymoon will be some time this summer.  We need a few months of rest to recover from the wedding.

  I hope I don't meet an Asian Bloke who would make me start thinking about marrying again. NO, NO, NO,NNNNNNNOOOOOOO!!! I would run for the hills. I wouldn't have the strength or patience to go through all that. You sound like a great guy EL. All the best on the honeymoon.

i heard once that people have exchange

ni chi fan le ma

with

ni li hun le ma?

good luck

Stay tuned.  There's more to come in the aftermath chapters.  I'm saving the part about how much fun it is to come back the day after the wedding party with the in-laws until after they go back to the hometown.

And, there's still time for the wedding studio to screw the albums and framed portraits up.

Chapter 13.  It's all over, or is it?

Sunday morning.  Woohoo!  It's all over.  I'm married and all the parties are done.  I can finally relax after . . . I can't remember how long this whole thing took to plan and pull off.

After breakfast, my darling wife takes a taxi to the wedding studio to return the white dress and a couple other outfits that we didn't end up using.  I try to get packed while she's gone, but my lovely daughter decides to come over to our hotel room and interrupt me.  Still, I manage to get most of our stuff sorted and shoved into the right bags.  For reasons I can't imagine, there's metal foil confetti scattered throughout the suite.

Our daughter was shoved into a taxi to go back to her other parents' house.  The rest of us all piled into a taxi and got back to the village with plenty of time for her parents to make lunch.  Since her parents were still there, I redirected my fantasies from testing out the wedding bedding to having a nice, quiet, relaxing afternoon.  Just kick back . . .  relax . . . maybe take a nap . . . and . . .

start rearranging the furniture again!

I thought I'd successfully derailed that runaway train the week before.  It turns out that wifey's parents had decided to invite her Aunt, Uncle, cousin, cousin's wife, and baby over to lunch or dinner at the house some unspecified time during the week.

This created several issues.  First, I REALLY needed to get some rest after all the entertainment of the previous days weeks months (seems like a couple of decades, at least), and rearranging everything I own is pretty much the opposite of relaxing.  Second, our dining table can barely hold 5 people, much less 8 or more.  Third, I was already way behind on work because of all of this and didn't need to spend the rest of the week moving things around and preparing for guests.  Fourth, I had foolishly been under the impression that my darling wife's parents would understand that newly married couples are, in virtually all cultures, traditionally left the hell alone after a wedding to rest, recover, and maybe actually enjoy some . . . spousal benefits.
 


So, instead of even getting a nap (on my scale of items needed for me to survive at that moment, a nap was rated only a tiny bit below oxygen), we  went out furniture shopping.  Items needed:  Some sort of display shelves and a bigger dining table.  There were two small stores nearby.  One just inside the village and one on a larger "shopping street" nearby.

The store inside the village had some shelves that I really didn't like.  Their dining table collection was an assortment of very low-grade wooden tops bolted onto folding legs.

The store outside the village didn't look too much more inviting - until the clerk chased us up the stairway in the back.  The second floor had some fairly nice furniture.  None of the shelves were right, but they had small glass top dining tables that were not too bad.  After some arguments over price, my darling wife beat them down to 250 RMB.  Since we still needed shelves, we didn't buy right away.

It was decreed decided that her parents could go back to the house and get some rest before making dinner and that my darling and I could spend the remainder of our first free afternoon as husband and wife going to one of the big furniture stores on the east side of town.

Along the way, I gently inquired how long we would be privileged to have her parents remaining as house guests.  She told me she wasn't sure.  Maybe 2 or 3 weeks.  Maybe longer.  Sadly, the back seat of a taxi cab offers few options for relatively quick, sure, and painless suicide.
 

The place we ended up in had 6 floors jammed full of furniture.  They covered the full spectrum.  From atrocious to attractive.  From tasteful to tacky.  I think they had enough to furnish all the houses in my village.

They had some nice glass dining tables, but those cost 3-8 times what the ones we'd looked at near the village cost.  What seemed lacking was a set of display shelves with cabinets underneath.  The few things that came close were either small or were set up with shelves and cabinet doors on both sides - useful as room dividers, but not workable against walls.  I did see a lot of things that gave me ideas for when we finally build our own house.

Finally, we worked our way up to the office furniture level.  I found an amazingly huge desk and executive chair that would make Bill Gates jealous, but it would have taken up the whole living room.  Tucked WAAAAY back in the corner was an acceptable glassed shelf and cabinet set with the floor model on sale for only 1150 RMB.  We went ahead and finished touring the building - the strange thing was that a sales girl shadowed us on the whole office furniture level.  On other floors, they only followed for a short distance before being replaced by a different one.  Stranger still, when we went back to buy the shelves (and a coat rack), we couldn't find anyone.  After a bit of shouting (I love the delicacy and grace of Chinese females in a shopping environment ), a salesgirl was found.  They said they could deliver on Monday.

One the way back, we went back to the store with the glass tables.  En route, I explained to my darling that we'd probably need 2 to accommodate everyone.  We'd set up the second one as a tea table when were weren't having larger groups over.  On arrival, further negotiations knocked the price of 2 tables down to a total of 450 RMB, with a promise of delivery on or before Friday.

On Monday afternoon, the display shelves arrived.  They barely made it up the stairs and through the doorway.  The I had to fight to keep from losing all the space as her parents decided the best way to rearrange things and clean up the room was to shove the items onto the shelves.  I wanted to use the space for my small, but growing Alcoholic Beverages of China collection, for some of our nicer tea stuff, and for wedding gifts.  They were taking snacks off of a desk we used as a snack table and putting them on display.  I finally couldn't take it anymore and spent some time hiding on the roof.

The rest of the week wore on slowly.  The tables kept not arriving and the other relatives were due for lunch on Saturday.  After my darling made threats of grave bodily injury asked politely, the store arranged to deliver 2 floor models on Friday with a promise to replace them with the ones we'd ordered a few days later.  I then had to restrain her father from moving one of the temporary tables into the position we were saving for a tea table - both since the table was temporary and because we needed both tables in the middle of the dining area to accommodate everyone.

Friday evening, we took them out to the local foot massage.  I guess I should have thought the timing of that through a little better.  Friday evenings are very busy at those places, so we ended up with 4 new girls.  Mine at least did a passable job popping some of the vertebrae in my neck and back (the first to succeed in this since the departure of the lovely, talented, and very strong #22), and the one working on my mother-in-law was reported as being ok.  My darling and her father were both annoyed after their girls didn't do well.  For some reason, the girl working on my darling wanted to focus on one foot and leg and mostly ignored the other, even after my wife told her to shift to the other side.  I've had this happen a couple of times when a massage girl didn't keep an eye on the clock and I ended up leaving with one leg massaged and the other not.  Under those circumstances, I find myself walking in circles.

I have now verified that it is possible to fit 8 adults and 1 baby at the pair of tables.  Two days later, the real ones arrived and the temporary ones went back on display at the furniture shop.

Sunday, we decided to continue this pattern of "never let me rest" by climbing a mountain.  This one wasn't one of the small ones in the parks near town.  This was somewhere way out on the boondocks and the park was huge.  We didn't make it all the way to the top and ended up turning around at "Heaven's Lake".  It looked more like "Heaven's Algae Pond" to me.  The we ended up having a late lunch at a shopping street down on the south end of Dongguan.  When we finally got home, I took a shower, fell face down on the bed, and passed out until dinner time.

Slowly, I was sinking into despair.  I really do like her parents, but live-in in-laws was not part of any prior discussion.  They have a nice apartment back in Jiangxi and have 3 more married children and 4 grandchildren there.  Had they decided that they really liked my quaint little village in Guangdong better?  Where they ever going to go home?  I couldn't even retreat to my office, since they'd commandeered that as their bedroom.  Instead, I had a network cable running out to a chair in the living room.  Doing my job is 1000 times harder if there are distractions, and there were plenty.  Like most Chinese, her mother seems to really like TV shows where the evil Japanese soldiers beat, torture, and kill innocent Chinese people (and the evil Japanese soldiers don't even have the courtesy to do this quietly while I'm working) before some Chinese hero comes in and quickly kills off the Japanese (and is occasionally even nice enough to do this fairly quickly and quietly - Go China! ).

On Tuesday morning my darling wife asked me for 400 RMB for her parents.  I asked what for and she said the magic words, Train Tickets.  Happily, she caught me just before I was about to execute my most cunning plan to frighten off the in-laws.  That would have involved taking an overdose of viagra and then doing an hour-long aerobics exercise routine in the living room twice per day, . . . naked.

Thursday morning came.  We had breakfast.  I carried the heavy luggage (judging by the weight, I think my darling gave them each a few dozen bricks as souvenirs) down the stairs and out to the waiting car.  I'm sure they were touched that I stood there waving until the car got out to the main road.  I decided it would be wisest not to mention to my lovely bride of less than 2 weeks that I was really just making 100% certain that they were really gone.

Finally, I can work in peace.

The only disturbance are the sounds from the industrial sewing machines next door and the occasional hammering from the metal shop at the end of the street.  It almost seems too quiet.  Almost, but not quite.

In a few hours, my darling bride will be home from work and we've got a whole weekend together with no in-laws.

EL, you really are a great guy. There is NO WAY known to man, that I would have your patience.   I am however starting to understand why I can hear Asian ladies talking at the top of their voices about four rows of poker machines away from me.

Chapter 14.  It's all over (except for the honeymoon )

I was beginning to wonder if we'd ever hear back from the wedding studio, but they finally called and said all the stuff was ready.  Last night, we went to collect everything.  I had these visions of our pictures with random words, tacky song lyrics (Right now, in some wedding studio somewhere in China, some innocent couple's picture is being defaced with the lyrics to Muskrat Love.  The horror, the horror. ), or other random "artistic" enhancements done to them.

I am happy to report that the liberal application of Klingon-style diplomacy (Terror must be maintained.) worked slightly better than anticipated.  There were no modifications or additions in the large framed pictures, and not a word of English or Chinglish to be seen in the albums or on any of the other items.  The ONLY changes anywhere were in two pics in the albums where we had requested that flaws near an edge of the pictures be fixed.  Beyond that, every stray hair was fully visible.

For those who've never had the joy of having a simple ID photo taken in China, let me fill you in.  After the pic is taken, the person at the photo store will spend anywhere from 10-30 minutes using photoshop to edit the pic.  This involves carefully making certain that there's not a single hair out of place and even can involve fixing up a few minor skin blemishes.  I'm always amazed at the level of effort put into something that's only going to end up being a tiny little ID photo.

So, now I've got 3 framed pics, the largest measuring 30 inches high and 40 inches wide, where I can see myself and my darling in very minute detail - and the "artist" decided not to spend even 1 minute to clean up the photos before sending these off for production.

Still, they all came out pretty good.

The reasons for this are 3-fold.

1.  Both of my darlings are absolutely gorgeous!
2.  Long hair (even when it's a little messy) on a guy is cool.   At last, I live in a country where most people accept this very obvious fact.
3.  We had a TON of pics to chose from and dumped all the ones that had really big problems, since we didn't trust the "artist" to fix them properly.

So, the loot came to:

3 big pics to hang on the wall.
3 photo albums (in their very own gold tone carrying case)
Several smaller pics to go on desks
1 decorative wedding certificate in a clear frame
1 glass block (heart-shapped) picture
6 wallet sized photos
2 glass-block keychain photos

Getting all that home was fun.  The biggest framed pic barely fit into the back of the taxi.  The 3 framed ones were together in a huge cloth shopping bag.  Guess I'll only need one shopping back when I go to the grocery store now.

Plus the stuff already collected - about 300 pics on a disk, the wedding photo DVD, and 2 posters.

Now I just have to find a place where I can get more items produced without the HUGE markups the wedding photo studios build in and with a competent person to clean up the pics beforehand.  I could open an art museum just for the wedding pics.

Other future artistic plans are to get a bunch of us dressed up in traditional outfits and head back out to some of the old buildings in parks around town for our own photo shoots.


So, the wedding is finally over, the in-laws are gone, and all the stuff from the wedding studio has been collected.
 

All that's left now is to decide where and when to have the honeymoon.

Glad things are going so well EL. Can't wait for the Honeymoon info.

Delay after delay, but the honeymoon is FINALLY scheduled.  We're going to Guilin for the last week in November.

 

All the best to you and your darling. After what you folks have been through,I reckon I'd need a long rest too before I had the strength to tackle a honeymoon. Don't forget to take some photos suitable for us to look at.

It's been exactly one year since my darling and I visited the Chapel Dongguan Civil Affairs Bureau of Love Harmonious Family Relationships.
 

Congragulations EL on reaching such a great milestone