Eric's Beijing Diary

Amy asked me to come to her wedding. I was about to say I couldn't make it, but I realized that if I left a week earlier, I could pretty easily stop by on my way to Hong Kong.

Weddings in China have a pretty standard format. It should be noted that Chinese weddings do not normally include wedding vows, because when the people have their wedding, they are already legally married. This is where Chinese weddings differ significantly from those in America. In the United States, the pastor of a church performing a wedding ceremony is acting as a legally designated officer of the state. Not so in China. In China, people go to a government office to register their wedding first, and then any ceremony they wish to have is pretty much up to them and their families.

Another thing that is very interesting about China, is that there are no wedding pictures. Couples take pictures, but they take them before the wedding, and often display them at the wedding. So the wedding pictures are not pictures of a wedding at all. They are pictures of two people dressed up in wedding garb assuming various poses. I have often wondered about this, but I think the reason is that in the past, many people could not afford a wedding, so they settled for the pictures. So any pictures you may see of an actual Chinese wedding would have been taken by guests of the event. The official "wedding pictures" are taken before the wedding, and are often displayed at the wedding.

That being said, it was a very nice party, and the weather cooperated enough to allow an outdoor ceremony.