Hi - I live in the US and have been reading about the traditional marriage customs in rural Taiwan in the 1950s and 1960s. I would like to know about present-day customs for engagement and marriage in Taiwan.
Do a search here for starters. There are quite a few threads on it. A lot will be narrative for want of a better word, and deal with foreigner/Taiwanese weddings, but it should be interesting.
Modern weddings are very similar to western weddings. Except that, there is never a “wedding” per se, unless the couple happens to be Christian.
Most couples, being Buddhist/Confucian/nothing, will have a reception (can be small or huge. I’ve been to some with well over 600 people). Sometime before, during, or after the reception, the couple will go to the local courthouse and register and that’s it. They’re married.
There’s a bit more to it, than that, but you’ll never see it unless you happen to part of the wedding party.
For example, I helped my Taiwanese friend get married. This involved driving a few hours to pick up his bride. The party stages somewhere a few hundred meters from the fiance’s parent’s house. When everything is ready, they drive in and drop firecrackers. This is to alert the family that the groom has arrived.
After that, everyone goes into the brides’ parents’ house and enjoys some snacks. You’ll probably get sweet red beans and candy. It’s important to eat sweet things, because there’s a Chinese proverb (I don’t recall what it is exactly) that says, eat something sweet, and you’ll have a son. So, they load up on sweets and eventually the bride comes out. Pictures are taken. Then my friend and his wife visited his wife’s family’s shrine and did some prayers. More pictures. Then they load up in the cars and drive back to the husband’s place. Before they go though, the bride will drop a fan (the little fold up paper kind) out of the car. Dropping the fan symbolizes a few things: first, it means that she is leaving her bad temper and bad habits behind. (Don’t ask me why it means this). The other reason is because “fan” in Chinese is sàn, which is also the pronunciation of “to break.” This, then, symbolizes that the wife is breaking from her family and her family’s name and going with her husband.
So, then they go to the husband’s house and he introduces her to his parents and family. More pictures, lots of hugging and crying and so on. More pictures. Seriously, my friend gave me his camera and told me to shoot everything I could. There were also about 20 other people taking pictures and I easily shot about 800 photos in the course of a few hours. Everything gets photographed.
Then it’s off the reception and, at one point in time or another, they go register and that’s that.
Hope that helps. This is just a quick write-up from what I can remember. Probably varies from family to family, but most of the “traditions” are fairly cemented. I’ve seen quite a few parties do the firecracker-to-alert-the-family thing when getting married.
Oh yeah, and I forgot the cars. You have to decorate the cars. If you ever see 4 or 5 cars driving together with red ribbons on the door handles - that’s a wedding party. They’re either driving to get the bride or they’re bringing the bride back to the husband’s house. The husband’s car will also have bamboo strapped onto it. Bamboo, of course, symbolizes long life.
As for the reception itself, it’s usually a gala event. Tons of food (12-15 courses seems about normal), red envelopes, speeches, lots of drinking and toasts and so on.
If I remember anything else, I’ll add it later, but I’m pretty sure I got the gist of it.
Nice one MPenguin. That’s pretty interesting.
Last time I was there I noticed that the amount of alcohol consumed seemed to have tapered off quite a bit. Not that there wasn’t any at all, but it was nothing compared to the spectacle of my wife trying to fight off the parade of uncles trying to get me drunk when we went back for our “wedding banquet” (we had actually married a few months earlier). I guess local law enforcement has gotten a little stricter on the drinking and driving.
The bride generally changes dressed two or three times during the reception, thereby having little chance of actually eating the food being served.
Most of the reception consists of a multi-course banquet, in which one of the dishes invariably has sea cucumbers.
The bride and groom go around toasting at every table. The couple may do this with tea instead of wine, so they can give face by ganbei-ing at each table without getting ripped.
Yes, the bride changes 2-3 times at a minimum. At one wedding I went to, she must have had 6 different dresses. Crazy.
What? You don’t like sea cucumbers? :lick: