The Chinese Wedding Shop: A Traditional Wedding For the Modern Bride

Another year, another Editor’s Choice Awards
round-up.

In a time where culture and heritage are
losing their popularity with the modern couple, The Chinese Wedding Shop has
reinvented the contemporary wedding concept with its traditional touch. And not
surprisingly, this customary Chinese bridal shop has made it into our list once
again (for the seventh year running), and for good reason.

Since 2009, The Chinese Wedding Shop has
proven time and again as the go-to
traditional vendor for all aspiring brides to honour their dialect group’s
customary wedding processes.

But just what
exactly do these wedding customs entail? Well, it all begins with…

Betrothal (Guo Da Li) Day

As its name suggests, Betrothal Day is a
significantly auspicious day that involves the groom bringing pre-discussed
gifts to the bride’s house. This array of betrothal gifts is nothing short of
extravagant — featuring a fully-endowed betrothal package for the bride’s
family during Guo Da Li.

Within these betrothal gifts, you’ll find a
tray of dowry money, gold jewellery, mandarin oranges, embellished traditional
tiered wedding baskets, traditional wedding biscuits, and more, according to
the couple’s dialect group.

At first glance, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed
by the sheer number of components needed for the dowry package. But that’s
exactly where The Chinese Wedding Shop comes into the picture, with their
pre-packed Betrothal (Guo Da Li)
Packages.

Betrothal
(Guo Da Li) Package

But these Guo Da Li Packages aren’t your
typical run-of-the-mill, mass-produced hamper set. Oh, no, instead, they’re
available in the five dialect group variations for Hokkien, Teochew, Cantonese,
Hakka, and Hainanese.

Each package comes with the following items:

●     Two pairs of Dragon and Phoenix
candles

●     Two sets of wedding biscuits*

●     Two boxes of pork leg cans / Two
sets of walnuts*

●     Two sets of auspicious wedding
grains (e.g. red dates, longan, wintermelon strips, lotus seeds, lily bulbs,
and rock sugar)

●     Dragon and Phoenix Tray

●     Everlasting red cloth

●     Teochew wax (For Teochews only)

●     Groom’s Angbao Set (consists of
Dowry Money, Nappy, and Open Car Door red packets)

●     Destiny discs

●     Betrothal tiered wedding baskets
(FOC for three days)

●     Double happiness stickers for
oranges

●     Organza bags for alcohol

●     Procedure list with step-by-step
instructions and meanings behind each item

*Depends on dialect group.

Each package is further customisable according
to the specific family requests.

Next, we have…

Setting the Matrimonial Bed (The An Chuang Ceremony)

For the unacquainted, think of setting the
matrimonial bed like doing lou hei…
but for your bed. It involves decorating the couple’s bed with items to bless
them with a blissful and harmonious marriage filled with ample offspring.

Although this idea may seem rather
old-fashioned, the sentimentality behind it is still meaningful.

Similar to the Guo Da Li Ceremony, the An
Chuang Ceremony is to be conducted on an auspicious date and time too.
Typically, doing it between one to three
days before the wedding is ideal. Otherwise, consulting an auspicious date
calendar might be useful too.

During this ceremony, the groom’s parents will
be the ones setting the bed. If they’re not available, a married couple can do
it too.

Bed-Setting
Set

Again, The Chinese Wedding Shop simplifies
these intricate ceremonies for you by providing a pre-packed Bed-Setting Set that contains all the
key ingredients needed like auspicious grains, red dates, dried longans,
peanuts, lotus seeds, red beans, lily bulbs, candies, destiny coins, and so on.

A pair of Mandarin oranges and Thuja leaves to
symbolise prosperity and fertility should also be prepared for this tradition.

And of course, this set comes complete with a
detailed set of step-by-step instruction guide to perform this intricate
ceremony.

Combing the Bride’s Hair

You can think of the Hair Combing Ceremony as a ritual to ‘pass on/bestow good blessings
onto the bride’.

Back in the day, this was traditionally
performed by a matchmaker or married couple with good fortune for obvious
reasons. But nowadays, it’s widely accepted for the couple’s parents to perform
this act too because it represents the parents as earning good fortune
themselves by welcoming their new son-in-law or daughter-in-law into the
family.

Hair
Combing Set

That’s why, The Chinese Wedding Shop offers a Hair-Combing Set that includes a comb,
a ruler, a hand-held mirror, a pair of gold scissors sealed, and a red string
tied into a knot along with auspicious recital lines for the ceremony. Couples
and their parents are highly encouraged to recite these lines together during
the hair combing.

Now, isn’t that a sweet sight to behold?

Fetching the Bride aka Gate-Crashing Fun

We believe everyone’s familiar with this next
fun part… the famous tradition of gate-crashing
activities!

Come the morning of the wedding day,
everyone’s a bundle of nerves, jitters, and excitement of course, for the big
day ahead. Gate-crashing activities are part of the whole fetching-the-bride
process where the groom will assemble his entourage to fetch his beloved
bride-to-be from her house.

Essentially, the gate-crashing challenges act
as roadblocks. They involve the bridesmaids concocting a series of games and
activities to make the entourage ‘suffer’ and prevent them from successfully
retrieving the bride.

Nappy
Red Packet + Mandarin Oranges Set

But before whisking away his bride like a
knight in shining armour, tradition dictates the groom present a Nappy Red Packet along with a tray of
Mandarin oranges to the bride’s mother — as a form of gratitude and filial
piety towards raising the daughter up.

Note: The Nappy Red Packet is part of The Chinese Wedding Shop’s Betrothal
(Guo Da Li) Package. Or you can get it as an ala-carte.

Red
Umbrella

On the way to the car, either the matchmaker
or the bride’s father will shelter the bride with a red umbrella all
the way to the wedding car (好命伞). She then gets to
keep the umbrella, a blessing for a smooth marriage life ahead.

The bride may also choose to toss a wedding hand-held fan out of the
wedding car prior to driving to the groom’s place. This symbolises tossing away
all of the bride’s bad habits in favour of good virtues as she marries into the
groom’s family.

All in all, gate-crashing is loads of fun,
laughter, and chaos for the whole tribe.

Tea Ceremony

Now, it’s time to quieten things down with the
elegant and quintessential tradition, the Tea
Ceremony.

This
tradition involves the bride and groom kneeling before their parents, and
serving tea to them as an act of filial piety. A pair of kneeling cushions is
prepared for the couple’s knees, to both soften the kneeling and wish them a
prosperous future together (富贵命).

Apart from their parents, the newlyweds will
also serve tea to their grandparents and other elders in the family.

Ceremonial
Tea Set as part of Dowry Package

For couples keen on performing the Tea
Ceremony, The Chinese Wedding Shop offers the ceremonial tea set as part of their Dowry Package.

A beautiful blend between modernity and culture

As we become more westernised as a society,
fewer couples are embracing these heritage wedding cultures.

This is why The Chinese Wedding Shop does an
excellent job of providing a contemporary approach to a modern Chinese wedding,
by providing different packages for every single Chinese wedding tradition you
wish to partake in.

Indeed, they’re the best-known vendor for
Chinese wedding customs for a reason. They have all the packages and hamper
sets you’ll need from start to finish of the entire Chinese wedding process.

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