Probably about the same.
So I have this friend who is thinking about getting married next year. He plans to get married in HK to save on all the paperwork and besides, if you’re having a tacky Chinese wedding you might as well be in the capital of Chinese Tack.
I… err my friend… invited her family to HK with us at my… err his expense because it seemed the decent thing to do. There has been some confrontation over the banquet situation because I find some of the stuff that goes on here tasteless to the extreme. Still, it’s their daughter’s wedding so who am I to refuse some old folks a bit of happiness. They are not very well off so I don’t mind a little rang bu on my part if it’s not totally overboard. Since my friend is a sad bastard with barely any friends or family in Taiwan, they will pay for the banquet and receive the hongbaos. He will pay separately for his big nose buddies.
There was some contention over those bloody biscuits/invitations. Ba & ma had never been abroad so I had planned to treat them to a holiday some time next year. I thought it was a bit cheeky to be asked by the gf to pay nearly 100k for some stupid biscuits on top of that so made it a simple deal - if the biscuits or so damn important, choose biscuits or holiday. Probably about the same outlay, in fact I will probably save money with the biscuits option.
After some further argument I figured what the hell, may as well turn it into a big game. My company has a printing offshoot so I can design some fancy custom invitations and print them for next to nothing. My grandmother taught me everything she knew about bargaining and I won’t be leaving any biscuit supplier until I have them in tears and get a 70% discount. Oh, and it goes without saying that the whole thing is getting written off as a business expense so I’ll get it all back come tax time. Her uncles like me… friend so he is guaranteed to get a nice suit and some other sundry items out of the deal. Maybe drop a few hints about how diu lian it is to give someone a cheap suit. If I play it smart I will get a wife, happy in-laws, a nice outfit plus a bit of a party for zero net outlay. Now that’s a Taiwanese wedding!
Wow I cant even begin to understand the logistics of all that, but 
it sounds good .
I never paid a dowry, but was told by the wife that I was expected to give the equivalent of $30K US ($NT 1 Million) back at some time to her father for retirement purposes.
A friend of mine who also married a Taiwanese, didn’t pay a dowry either, but sends $300 US or so each month to the mother in law.
It goes both ways though, her family sends money in times of need and we do the same to them. And yea, they did count and record all the Hong Bao proceeds in a registry book. Looks like we’re in this for the long haul 
[quote=“weiguo_penyou”]I never paid a dowry, but was told by the wife that I was expected to give the equivalent of $30K US ($NT 1 Million) back at some time to her father for retirement purposes.
A friend of mine who also married a Taiwanese, didn’t pay a dowry either, but sends $300 US or so each month to the mother in law.[/quote]
This is where I always get lost. Aren’t the sons supposed to support the parents? And daughters get married off and don’t have financial responsibility for the family? Why is it always different for daughters who marry foreigners?
[quote=“Indiana”][quote=“weiguo_penyou”]I never paid a dowry, but was told by the wife that I was expected to give the equivalent of $30K US ($NT 1 Million) back at some time to her father for retirement purposes.
A friend of mine who also married a Taiwanese, didn’t pay a dowry either, but sends $300 US or so each month to the mother in law.[/quote]
This is where I always get lost. Aren’t the sons supposed to support the parents? And daughters get married off and don’t have financial responsibility for the family? Why is it always different for daughters who marry foreigners?[/quote]
Well… I suppose, but my wife’s family is 4 girls, no sons. I am the next best thing! And I’m white, so they can show me off like a new trophy at their banquet dinners! All in good fun of course!
[quote=“weiguo_penyou”][quote=“Indiana”][quote=“weiguo_penyou”]I never paid a dowry, but was told by the wife that I was expected to give the equivalent of $30K US ($NT 1 Million) back at some time to her father for retirement purposes.
A friend of mine who also married a Taiwanese, didn’t pay a dowry either, but sends $300 US or so each month to the mother in law.[/quote]
This is where I always get lost. Aren’t the sons supposed to support the parents? And daughters get married off and don’t have financial responsibility for the family? Why is it always different for daughters who marry foreigners?[/quote]
Well… I suppose, but my wife’s family is 4 girls, no sons. I am the next best thing! And I’m white, so they can show me off like a new trophy at their banquet dinners! All in good fun of course![/quote]
So, your case is different, but let me ask you this…do the other sisters and their husbands pay into the family too?
I’m a girl who married a Taiwanese. No money was given to my mother for my purchase. We didn’t want to have a wedding at all, and only told most of the family that we were getting married on the morning of the court date. The threw us a very hasty suprize wedding anyway. That was it. Poor family friends and business associates showed up with hasty red envelopes and we both felt like shmucks.
My cousin-in-law, a girl, married and was mortified when her parents refused to return her bride price and argued with the groom’s family, who paid for the banquet, to keep all the red envelopes from that, too.
[quote=“Indiana”][quote=“weiguo_penyou”][quote=“Indiana”][quote=“weiguo_penyou”]I never paid a dowry, but was told by the wife that I was expected to give the equivalent of $30K US ($NT 1 Million) back at some time to her father for retirement purposes.
A friend of mine who also married a Taiwanese, didn’t pay a dowry either, but sends $300 US or so each month to the mother in law.[/quote]
This is where I always get lost. Aren’t the sons supposed to support the parents? And daughters get married off and don’t have financial responsibility for the family? Why is it always different for daughters who marry foreigners?[/quote]
Well… I suppose, but my wife’s family is 4 girls, no sons. I am the next best thing! And I’m white, so they can show me off like a new trophy at their banquet dinners! All in good fun of course![/quote]
So, your case is different, but let me ask you this…do the other sisters and their husbands pay into the family too?[/quote]
Well, Her oldest sister is married, I am not sure if he paid a dowry or not. But she is now pretty much running the family business. So in this situation, everybody gets to chip in! It’s really not a big deal, my in-laws love us and our baby and contribute to our success as much as we give back. The way I look at it, the social/family based welfare system is much better than what we have in the States. Here, we just move our Grandparents into some kind of luxury old-folks condos and let them wither away in their loneliness. Everybody knows that the social security system is broke, I don’t expect it to be there for me in 40 years. In Asian societies, you have live baby-sitters & Families stay close.
[quote=“weiguo_penyou”][quote=“Indiana”][quote=“weiguo_penyou”][quote=“Indiana”][quote=“weiguo_penyou”]I never paid a dowry, but was told by the wife that I was expected to give the equivalent of $30K US ($NT 1 Million) back at some time to her father for retirement purposes.
A friend of mine who also married a Taiwanese, didn’t pay a dowry either, but sends $300 US or so each month to the mother in law.[/quote]
This is where I always get lost. Aren’t the sons supposed to support the parents? And daughters get married off and don’t have financial responsibility for the family? Why is it always different for daughters who marry foreigners?[/quote]
Well… I suppose, but my wife’s family is 4 girls, no sons. I am the next best thing! And I’m white, so they can show me off like a new trophy at their banquet dinners! All in good fun of course![/quote]
So, your case is different, but let me ask you this…do the other sisters and their husbands pay into the family too?[/quote]
Well, Her oldest sister is married, I am not sure if he paid a dowry or not. But she is now pretty much running the family business. So in this situation, everybody gets to chip in! It’s really not a big deal, my in-laws love us and our baby and contribute to our success as much as we give back. The way I look at it, the social/family based welfare system is much better than what we have in the States. Here, we just move our Grandparents into some kind of luxury old-folks condos and let them wither away in their loneliness. Everybody knows that the social security system is broke, I don’t expect it to be there for me in 40 years. In Asian societies, you have live baby-sitters & Families stay close.[/quote]
That’s nice…it sounds like you are really close knit with your wife’s family and that everyone plays a fair part. 
My advice to any newbies is to just go with the flow (albiet with your eyes open of course), every family will have different expectations and in the end your wife will be looking out for your combined interests. Just remember you are marrying into a family and the costs involved in buying cookies and hong baos etc. is a small price to pay if it satisfies your wife to be and gains her families and friends respect, appreciation and support in the future - particularly worthwhile if you plan to stay in Taiwan.
I paid up a hong bao to her father. Then her brother collected all of the hong baos on the day of the wedding. But they paid for the banquet, so in the end the Hong Bao I paid was in lieu of paying for the Banquet. There was some left over, but the vast majority of the money was from his friends whose kids weddings he had been forking money over for years. The recording of hong bao payments is reasonable, otherwise why would anyone pay more than a couple of hundred NT?