The weird thing about my wedding is most of the guests… are from my side. My gf will pretty much only have a few close friends and some coworkers, and the little bit of family she has, while I’m going to bringing my current coworkers, coworkers from my last job, grad school classmates, and friends… So I’m looking good on the hongbao front. 
True. Unfortunately we did not have our own apartment yet and I was staying with wife in her apartment. Years later mother-in-law payed 0.8 Million NT to a telephone gangster. Well, nice to know my money was put to good use.
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Seriously? WTF? How does that work? “Hey, I’m so gangsta you hafta gimme your money, LOL!” “K, help yourself to my savings!” 
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I had made a thread about it those days. It basically works by calling both the landline and the cellphone of an elderly, then pretending to be police hand having a file about that-old-story-that-you-did-50-years-ago and threatening the elderly with a commanding voice to go to jail. Then a meeting is setup where a young courier will be met over at the parking lot and accompany the elderly to an ATM. A while later a fake policeman shows up at the house asking the elderly in a strict voice if everything would be okay or any questions would remain. That is how it worked. The network got caught and sentenced, yet the family of the gangsters quickly gave up their legal jobs and hid the assets before mum-in-law’s lawyer could trace any of it.
I have friends who did weddings at a church where the only cost is probably the food. Seriously I don’t understand the need for all the jazz and photos but I guess everyone has their thing.
Well… you can use church for cheap wedding and tell pastors you would like to offer donation.
For the banquet, you can merely invited your best friends in the good buffet or restaurant which each table costs you around 5000 NTW. For the photos, it is around 40,00 NTW and I think it is cheap.
Do I help you ?
Well I can’t do a church because I’m not Christian.
It’s OK, I have it all sorted out. Once the date is passed, I’ll fill everyone in on pricing and info on how we did it.