A wedding

A friend of mine, a classmate, got married this afternoon. The church service was really quite spectacular - it was held at the Hong Kong Catholic Cathedral - especially since it was the first church wedding I've attended in my adult life, and only the second church wedding I've ever attended. In my 1+ year of living in Hong Kong, I've only attended civil ceremonies, which involve a registration ceremony at City Hall, followed by photo-taking, then a reception at a luxury hotel in the evening. The drawback about this particular ceremony was that I had to endure a rather long sermon in Cantonese, and because my supervisor was sitting right next to me, I had to be on my very best behaviour.

My classmate was very considerate to invite me and my classmates (and our supervisor) to the church service, but not the reception. I say so because in Hong Kong, at the church service, guests tend to give gifts, but at the reception, they are expected to fill and return an envelope (that is distributed along with the invitation) with money. I'm told that the going rate is $500-1000 HKD or more, depending on your social status and income. I'm also grateful that I didn't have to attend the "tea ceremony" (in which the groom pours tea for his new in-laws), and also a very cute, not-so-spontaneous custom in which the groom, on the morning of the wedding, leads an entourage to the bride's house, and begs her friends and family, who keep the door blocked, to let him see his bride. Very very cute. You can see such a scene at the beginning of Young and Dangerous 4. Anyway, being excluded from the morning activities (which only involve family, relatives, and close close friends) allowed me to sleep until noon. As for the reception, I'm not in the mood to spend 3-4 hours at a banquet where I'll probably be forced to sit with strangers. I'm bailing out of another friend's banquet in Guangzhou next Saturday.

As with the other weddings I've attended in Asia, I didn't get to see much at all. My friend hired not just a photographer, but also a camera crew to film her special day. Like my cousin's wedding last July and my friend's procession and ceremony in the Forbidden City last September, these cameramen obscured the view for almost everybody! Exchange of vows? Didn't see it. "The groom may now kiss the bride"? Nope. Sometimes, I wonder why I even attend weddings at all if I won't see anything anyway. "Send me a copy of the video," I'll tell them. Nah, I understand that they want me there, whether I can see anything or not.

Something else I noticed about this wedding, as well as a couple of others I attended recently, was that extremely few people in Hong Kong dress appropriately for weddings. The groom usually wears a business suit rather than a tuxedo, and the maid of honour and the bridesmaids usually wear dresses that are appropriate for the occasion. However, I must say that the colour of dresses, shirts, and ties have become more and more diverse (and less and less formal), making weddings less and less of a solemn occasion and more and more like a party. I'd say that only one third of the guests dress in what they should be proud to call their Sunday best. At a registration ceremony at City Hall I attended on a Friday afternoon in June, I was a bit shocked to see that so many of the guests were actually dressed relatively appropriately (i.e. not wearing jeans and t-shirts). It then occurred to me that these people were dressed for work. Well, despite Hong Kong's blazing 30 degree celsius October heat, I still insisted on wearing my cheap, ill-fitting suit.


Although my friend's wedding was a joyous occasion, I did find myself reduced to tears at certain moments. Before the ceremony started, I remembered that when first notified of the wedding around ten months ago, my friend asked me to bring my girlfriend. It was sad to be reminded of this invitation, and of the sad fact that the two of us are no longer together. During the ceremony, I was surprised that tears welled up in my eyes when the bride and the groom walked down the aisle, both on their way in and on their way out. After the ceremony, and while we were waiting for our turn to take photos, my supervisor half-jokingly urged my classmates to get married ourselves, not just for the sake of Hong Kong's survival (to relieve the demographic pressures of an ageing population and to maintain the competitiveness of Hong Kong's human resources - the topic of a recent conference), but also for our own sakes. Yep, the tears flowed once again.