Hi All,
For some reasons, I would like to ask all the forumosa friends from all over the world,
How are weddings held in your country?
I am a Taiwanese, but I have been facing some marital pressure recently.
These marriage pressures come from traditional customs in Taiwan
(or China, I don’t know)
In Taiwan, if you want to get married,
The man must give “small” and “big” “money” to the woman’s family.
This is called “Ping-Gin”(聘金)
There are also some customary traditional cakes to be given to the woman’s family.
In addition, the man is also responsible for the wedding banquet.
The total amount of these costs is about 28,000 ~ 31,000 USD on average.
In other words, the cost ranges from NT$900,000 to more than NT$1 million.
However, I live in a blue-collar class and I don’t have that much savings.
I bought a GIA certified diamond to propose to my girlfriend.
This cost me all my savings.
However, my girlfriend’s family insists on the so-called “traditional marriage”.
I’m under a lot of pressure right now and I don’t know how can I do.
I live in Taipei, which is the northern part of Taiwan,
However, my girlfriend is from the south.
There are still some regional cultural differences.
Just wanted to ask everyone’s opinion, what should I do?
I really love my GF but … please , I needed someone to lead me a light.
A huge part of marriage in any country, but particularly Taiwan, is dealing with idiotic in-laws.
Say no, do what you and your partner want. Ignore everyone else. They probably just want to leach money from you and are using ‘tradition’ as an excuse.
Yea and wait til the in laws insists that you buy a house in a location that you can’t possibly afford, and must work 996 schedules (both of you that is) to keep it from getting foreclosed.
You’ve done enough. Traditional for the ring is something like 3-6 months salary. Not your entire savings.
Just smile and promise to make lots of money and then tell you wife you’ll only see these people once a year so why care so much? Live as far away from her family as you can without being obvious about not wanting to be around them.
I think some of you are assuming the future wife doesn’t want the ping jin. In many cases they want it just as much as they they believe they are worth it or else they will receive some of it back to them as a kind of insurance account.
I did the ring and the cookies and it fair cleared me out at the time. Never paid any ping jin but they got to keep all the wedding hongbaos which was pretty stingy of them since they are supposed to kickback to the newly Weds.
This amount of ping jin is quite high (although not they highest I have heard of either) this is a more traditional family hoping to sell off their daughters to doctors and dentists I bet.
If I was you I would tell them it’s not your culture to pay pingjin, and you need the money to get setup as a couple , they can take some/all of the hongbao at the wedding IF you are not paying for the wedding. If you are paying for the wedding you get to keep some/all of the hongbaos. If they still kick up then just call it off.
You won’t get the engagement ring back either, that’s considered a down payment in Taiwan. No I’m not joking!
The amount of money being requested is not at all small you need to have a proper conversation with your girlfriend about this and expectations. And also her family. Like how would you get setup as husband and wife being expected to fork over so much money. It’s stupid unless you are rich people whose family pay the ping jin for them. If she wants a rich guy she needs to make things clear.
Anyway at the end of the day you aren’t paying that. You can explain in a nice way but in the end just say no it’s not happening.
In this case they don’t care about anything like that. The parents just want the ping jin. Yeah I get the feeling they are a bit greedy.
Although you are right some of them, including the future wife herself, will say she needs to be put on the deeds of the house.
If a trophy wife they will even say you will have to pay for a nanny for the baby cos she won’t be looking and also she won’t be cooking and will need X number of foreign holidays a year etc. Rich peoples games…different world.
Mistake. You need savings to do things in life. If you spend all your savings on a ring it won’t necessarily be appreciated. As you know people give money in red envelopes at weddings… normally more than the cost of the meal the wedding party is paying for. No point bankrupting yourself to get married. Being under financial stress is a good way to head to divorce.
Love is a two way thing, does your GF love you enough she won’t demand you to go bankrupt to suit her parents whims? If not then she doesn’t really love you enough for a stable marriage. PS I never gave any money to my wife’s family. Their daughter is for sale?
When my wife and I got married we kept all the extra funds that were not used to pay for the wedding. That money does not go to the in-laws. Never.
I shudder at the thought of getting married here, the weddings I’ve been to here were god-awful. I’d rather eat glass than have one of those garish huge banquet hall weddings myself.
And i generally feel opposed to the idea of inviting people you barely know to just get a Hong bao out of them. wtf is that all about? I feel I was swindled out of a decent amount of money from the last 2 weddings I went to.
Some Western countries ain’t much better these days, also expecting cash and not small amounts either. Its 3,000-6000 ntd back in my homeland , what is it here these days?
The problem is that yeah you get invited to weddings of people you don’t really know in Taiwan.
This kind of payment exists in many traditional cultures because the woman’s parents usually assume that the man will permanently take their daughter away from them.
Two questions:
Is your fiancé going to leave her parents and move in with your parents after you get married?
Will she become the daughter of your parents? (eg. will she take care of your parents and cook for your parents when they get old instead of her own parents?)
If the answer to the above questions is “yes”, then it’s fair to pay her parents money. But I suspect the answer is “no”, so you can tell her parents to go fuck themselves. (Not necessarily using those words.)
You actually think i haven’t dodged the vast majority?
I’ve been to 3. The ex gfs cousin or something. It was down in Taichung and i had to pay nothing. It was actually alright.
Second one was one my gf asked me to join because she didn’t know anyone else there. It was some Malaysian people she worked with like 10 yrs ago. I don’t think they even lived here, seems like they just came back to throw a wedding, invite every acquaintance they ever met then bugger off back to their own country with the money they swindled out of the guests. (and probably throw another wedding there)
The last one was a few months ago. Gfs family member, so I’m pretty much obliged to go. I gave them way too much money. I don’t care that i got a fancy box of biscuits in return. I felt nothing for those biscuits.
The wedding was just god awful. They were only like mid 20’s and had dance shows and like 5 changes of clothes from the bride and groom. It was a 屁孩 wedding by all accounts.
I just don’t care for all the showing off, where is the modesty? Somebody i know recently had a proposal party, the whole thing was extravagant and already like a standard wedding. I genuinely fear what the actual wedding is going to be like.
OP says he is Taiwanese, lives in Taipei and didn’t say he was born or grew up overseas, so why are we bringing up western culture in the conversation? It doesn’t seem all that relevant.
I thought the same, if she wants to be traditional that includes responsibilities on her end. Will she follow through?
And how can one even ask this? How to trust the answer?
If the parents turn around and use the money to help buy a home for the young couple, and just want the high number for bragging rights, that’s bearable
But overall, if she isn’t willing to marry for nothing, probably best not to risk it
