Taiwan Marriage Custom? (cash vs. cookies as a dowry)

Life Dating & Relationships
41

Bride-price: This isn’t as common these days in Taiwan. You would be quite reasonable in saying that you can’t afford this. On the other hand, I’ve known people to pay this and get the inlaws buying a house for them in return.

Cookies: The better ones are about 500NT a box and go to the fiance’s family and friends. If you have about 500 guests, factoring in families, that’s perhaps 150-200 boxes. So closer to 5000NT than 5000US. Pay it. It’s normal. (Btw they can be very good).

Photos/dresses: 20000-60000 (and up). You or the family could pay for this.

Jewellery: ??? Your or your family could pay for this.

Banquet: This can go one of two ways. Either the family pays for it all and takes the red envelope money, or you pay for it all and take the money. Probably easier the first way. People talk about making money off this, but it’s not likely to be much, if the restaurants a good one. You’d only make money if you had it at a cheaper restaurant. Basically the banquet pays for itself.

‘Monthly dowry’: As Feiren noted, they’re probably talking about the amount most children pay to their parents for upkeep. Base it on what you earn. I never pay this, but 2000-5000 is probably normal (depending on what you earn). Only children and first sons have more responsibility for this.

My advice is that if your inlaws seem to be reasonable people, keep them happy and let them do most of the work. Insist on the details that are most important to you. The wedding is a big face thing for them, and in their eyes is more about them than about you. If they’re reasonable people you might well find out that if you treat them well they help you out financially in the future too.

Brian

42

The third way is you pay for everything and your inlaws take the money from “their” guests (meaning anyone who is a friend or relative of the bride). This was justified to me by them saying that since we never had an official “engagement” dinner for them to profit from, this was the way it was going to be. :unamused:

43

The third way is you pay for everything and your inlaws take the money from “their” guests (meaning anyone who is a friend or relative of the bride). This was justified to me by them saying that since we never had an official “engagement” dinner for them to profit from, this was the way it was going to be. :unamused:[/quote]
Interesting…and disturbing. I imagine you had to take a deep breath when you heard that one.

One reason I’ve heard for a woman’s parents keeping the money from their guests or keeping some of the banquet money is that they somehow need it for the red envelopes that they’ll have to give at later weddings for the children of the friends who came to their daughter’s wedding. That strikes me as somewhat insane, but what do I know. I guess I just don’t understand Chinese culture. :frowning:

44

:noway: :noway: :noway: :noway: :noway:

Why are you letting them do this to you? Are you that whipped? Look, it may be their culture, but it’s your money! If your adopted family wants to follow an insane Taiwanese custom of bride prices and the ceremonial burning of cash, let them spend their own money to satisfy that cultural obligation.

Folks, You will never catch me buying wedding cookies, I can tell you. I consider my bottom line to be the outer boundary of the sovereign territory of Spamonia. Spamonian revenues are spent according to Spamonian custom. According to our traditions, Taiwanese culture ends where the Spamonian natioinal treasury begins.

Taiwanese may visit the treasury. They may make appeals to the beneficence of the king. They may of course pay tribute. But they most certainly may not make demands.

45

[quote=“gg1965”]

that is my point - we did mix our wedding with a bit of the two cultures. but it seems to me, that many foriegners in taiwan don’t get a chance to blend their two cultures into the wedding - instead, it seems that they are “forced” to follow the Taiwanese culture for their wedding. we did blend the two cultures for our event and no-one was demanding anything.

i’m not saying that people should have a 100% one sided culture - but i do think that TW people should be more open when their daughter, or even themselves, are marrying a foreigner and not simply demanding everything to be strictly TWese.[/quote]

it really depends on what makes everyone happy, first the bride and groom, and then the immediate family if the bride and groom are concerned how they feel. in almost any case it’s a family event, and probably more so when people are “giving their daughter away.” i think it’s worth it to try and make mom and dad happy, face it you probably weren’t their dream husband, and don’t get me wrong, if you’re a stubborn bastard like me things are probably not going to get any better for them so within reason try to make it as happy of a moment as possible for everyone. if no one is demanding anything that’s great, as far as i was concerned without family here i could have cared less if we got married on a mud flat, it’s just a ceremony to me, so i really didn’t have any demands of my own.

46

[quote=“Bu Lai En”]Bride-price: This isn’t as common these days in Taiwan. You would be quite reasonable in saying that you can’t afford this. On the other hand, I’ve known people to pay this and get the inlaws buying a house for them in return.

Cookies: The better ones are about 500NT a box and go to the fiance’s family and friends. If you have about 500 guests, factoring in families, that’s perhaps 150-200 boxes. So closer to 5000NT than 5000US. Pay it. It’s normal. (Btw they can be very good).

Photos/dresses: 20000-60000 (and up). You or the family could pay for this.

Jewellery: ??? Your or your family could pay for this.

Banquet: This can go one of two ways. Either the family pays for it all and takes the red envelope money, or you pay for it all and take the money. Probably easier the first way. People talk about making money off this, but it’s not likely to be much, if the restaurants a good one. You’d only make money if you had it at a cheaper restaurant. Basically the banquet pays for itself.

‘Monthly dowry’: As Feiren noted, they’re probably talking about the amount most children pay to their parents for upkeep. Base it on what you earn. I never pay this, but 2000-5000 is probably normal (depending on what you earn). Only children and first sons have more responsibility for this.

My advice is that if your inlaws seem to be reasonable people, keep them happy and let them do most of the work. Insist on the details that are most important to you. The wedding is a big face thing for them, and in their eyes is more about them than about you. If they’re reasonable people you might well find out that if you treat them well they help you out financially in the future too.

Brian[/quote]

I don’t agree with some parts of your post :smiley:

Cookies : the everage prize per box is around 400NT$, and the ‘good’ one are around 600NT$ or more (400NT*150 boxes= 60000NT$ :slight_smile: )

photos: in Taipei the cheapest prices are around 40000NT$ for only 30 photos (generaly you take around 200, and they charge you 1000NT$ more if you want to take back home extra photos) , and it can be more than 100000NT$ depend what you take

Jewellery: around 40000NT$ or more (all must be in gold not the cheap night market one… :s )

Banquet: around 1500-2000NT$ per person

it was just a small 2006 update of your post :stuck_out_tongue:

47

That’s very true. The way they see it. They’ve been paying hongbao’s for their relatives children and will do in the future. The hongbaos for your wedding are return. We paid for our wedding and took the hongbaos, but we should pay hongbaos for future weddings of relatives sort of on my mother in law’s behalf.

Excellent comments. If you want your dream wedding, you can always go and have your own party as well or a seperate ceremony in your own country. Personally I wanted a booze-up with friends, so after the banquet my friends and family, and just the close family and friends of my wife, went on to a suite I rented at a hotel for a good piss-up - much more fun than the wedding itself.

This really depends where you go. those prices seem like what you’d pay at an expensive hotel restaurant. We had ours at a good restaurant and it was 1000pp plus booze, flowers etc. A lot of people go a lot cheaper than this - as low as 500 for a cheapo seafood restaurant.

Brian

48

Well I can’t for the life of me remember who got the hungbaos at my wedding, so I suppose it must have been settled amicably.
I do remember that a drunk Frenchman slept on our bedroom floor on our wedding night.

49

I laughed at this one. My girlfriend just straight up said it’s part of the culture to give money but she didn’t give me an amount

Edit: not really sure about this actually. We will talk about it more later

50

Well how much depends on the relationship and where the dinner (or lunch) is and few other things like the location. Most people (familes) keep track how much people pay so if you pay the odd amount (too low, or a large amount) you will be remembered !

1 Like
51

I’m really poor so I guess I’ll just have to be “the one who is remembered”

Unemployment during covid in America hit me pretty hard. Drained all my savings. I only have about 4,000 usd left now plus 9,000 I borrowed :sob:

52

Your going with your GF? Let her take care of the amount, if she local she can figure out what is what as well the correct (lucky) number amounts. Also as non local you may (maybe) get a pass as you do not know the amounts as long its super low.