Planning a Chinese/American Wedding

Exciting news!! I got married!! In two countries! It was crazy! Ahhhhh!

I would like to share some of my experience and advice after pulling off weddings in China and America. If you’re getting serious with someone from outside your culture, or if you’re just curious, I hope this post is satisfying!

My main advice for those who are probably going to do this in real life is… Repeatedly discuss these two very important questions with your significant other:

1. What are the normal engagement and wedding customs in your culture/family?

2. What engagement and wedding customs do you personally like and want to do?

I wish that my husband and I had discussed BOTH of these questions more frequently and earlier on in the wedding process. We did get married, so it all worked out, but there might have been fewer surprises / awkward situations / frustrations if we had communicated more. (I feel like that sentence sums up intercultural relationships really well, haha! Communicate… communicate… communicate…)

Our first wedding in China was American style. 

Our second wedding in the U.S. was Chinese style.

What We Did & Why

My dream was to have an American-style wedding in China and a Chinese-style wedding in America. I thought this sounded fun and interesting! Until our wedding, none of my family had visited China before, so giving my relatives and friends a taste of my relationship and my life in China at our wedding in the U.S. was very important to me. I felt that doing cross-cultural weddings would express our cross-cultural identity as a couple. Doing our weddings this way would mean sacrificing certain customs – that is, I couldn’t have a truly and completely American wedding in China on a reasonable budget, and we couldn’t do all of the Chinese family traditions in America. That’s reality.

However, my then fiancé agreed to my crazy plans and was comfortable with letting go of his family’s expectations and many of his country’s traditions, just as I was willing to be satisfied with the “gist of it.” For us, the true meaning of the wedding was in our vows. So as long those were central, we could sacrifice other things.

You may not initially realize what traditions you need to “feel married,” but thinking that through (and expressing it to your partner) is paramount.

Doing our weddings this way felt sacrificial sometimes, yet it also let us take a lot of blissful shortcuts. “Your dad wants us to do what? Just tell him this is the American way! My mom thinks we should do that? Sorry, we’re doing it the Chinese way!” It was liberating and allowed us to do what we actually wanted to do for our weddings. Maybe you aren’t quite as crazy as us, or your family is against it, and you decide to do the right wedding in the right country. If so, your planning will probably be smoother!

Chinese & American Engagement

In China, a couple’s engagement is usually official when the parents and close family members on both sides share a meal together. Traditionally, this event should happen on a lucky date on the calendar. Surprise proposals, with a bouquet of nineteen roses and a diamond ring, are becoming more popular. If there is a ring, the girl probably won’t wear it afterwards.

Since I’m American, my husband proposed a more American way. After several friends briefing him on what to do, and we had picked out the ring together, he popped the question with a photo book, flowers and candles on a private back patio while a photographer hid in the bushes. I loved it! blush

We also did an engagement party, where we invited our friends and his family (mine was in the U.S.) to share cupcakes and socialize. I was surprised when his family arrived with traditional silver jewelry and a large red envelope full of cash as gifts for me. I didn’t know whether to try to refuse (which is usually polite) or to just accept. His family was also surprised by the event, which did not include a meal, and many more friends than family were present. Whoops! Never a dull moment in a cross-cultural romance.

Often not long after the engagement, couples in China do a huge photo shoot! These engagement photos are really wedding photos – you have an entire room of wedding attire at your disposal, as well as professional makeup artists and locations of your choice. I wasn’t comfortable wearing a white dress before the real Big Day, so my husband and I did some traditional Chinese outfits and a blue ball gown / bowtie. I’m so happy that we did this photo shoot in China, as it was much more affordable than getting photos of that level in the U.S.!

Chinese Wedding

Once the engagement is official, the wedding planning can begin! Most Chinese families hire a wedding company to take care of everything. This company helps you rent your dresses and tuxes for the entire wedding party, provides makeup and hair people, provides the photographer, does all the set up and tear down, etc. Since we were trying to have an American event in China and spend money wisely, we only used a wedding company for our dinner reception décor. It turned out lovely, and it was such a relief to not have to worry about it!

Traditional Chinese weddings (in our province and city) can last for a few days or at least one full day of wedding. Most guests are only invited to the dinner event. However, there is also the luncheon where the bride’s family hosts the groom’s family, the loading of all the gifts into the car, the fetching of the bride from her room, the funny obstacles the groom must overcome to get his bride from her house, the constant exchange of red envelopes and cigarettes, the caravan of vehicles from one house to another (similar to a Western funeral, but happier), and on and on, until finally there is the dinner in the evening.

The Chinese wedding dinner usually includes a Western-style ceremony inserted halfway, complete with the bride dramatically entering in a white dress and the exchanging of rings and simple vows. This is sandwiched between the Chinese traditions of the bride and groom welcoming all the guests at the door (and receiving all the red envelopes of cash money), and the couple toasting each table of guests (after the bride has changed into a red dress or qipao). There is also usually entirely too much food stacked onto the tables, the parents give speeches, someone sings a song or performs a dance, and an emcee entertains with games and prizes. We tried to replicate this dinner at our States-side wedding and got decently close!

On the wedding night, close friends and cousins accompany the couple to their home/hotel and play some “wedding pranks.” (And all the Americans just shuddered in horror upon reading that statement, haha!)

As for the legal stuff: To get legally married in China, you must fill out paperwork which you sign, date and fingerprint at a government office. They then issue you two copies of a little red booklet that include you and your partner’s information and photo. There is a small fee. Traditionally, many Chinese prefer to do get their red book on a lucky day as well, since it’s the legal date of the marriage. This marriage document is recognized worldwide, so once we were married in China we didn’t (and actually couldn’t) get legally married in the U.S., as we were already married.

And that is the most succinct summary I can make of Chinese weddings! Aiya!

American Wedding in China

The pros and the cons, my friends (in random order):

+We had our ceremony at the church where we attend, and as such we did not pay anything for the building, the officiant, the pianist, or the sound guy. In China, it’s all about who you know!

-Finding an officiant to marry us was surprisingly difficult. Most of the people we asked weren’t too keen on the attention of a Chinese-foreigner wedding. (For Chinese, the emcee usually narrates the vows, if they do them.) I wrote the entire script for the wedding myself (mostly inspired by traditional Western ceremony I found online), and my husband translated it.

+Flowers are so cheap here!! Our wedding arch was gorgeous!

-Our photographer did not speak English and missed capturing a few key moments in the ceremony, as he was not familiar with Western weddings.

+Buying my dress and his suit was so, so cheap. Both were custom made.

-I had to get alterations on my custom dress because the shop girl didn’t think to measure my abnormally long torso. (Sorry-not-sorry, I’m not Chinese size.)

+We were able to hire a company to handle the reception decorations (as mentioned previously). Our dining tables were outdoors with candles and dangling lights in the trees and dancing under the stars! This definitely would have been outside our budget in the U.S.

-Finding everything from candles to the flower girl basket in white, not red, was a constant struggle, but possible!

+Everyone applauded as each member of the bridal party walked down the aisle, haha!

-Guests had their phones out and photographers crowded around throughout the ceremony. Huge cultural difference! (We only hired one photographer and one videographer… Who were the other people with large cameras? No idea.)

+We sang and vowed in both of our heart languages.

-Designing our invitation took ages, as we asked a friend to do it, and no matter how many drafts he sent us I still found typos in the English. Most Chinese hand-deliver invitations a week before the wedding, so no one really understood my agony about finishing the invitations so far in advance. (Eventually the guy copy-and-pasted the English portion.)

+Most importantly, my students, coworkers, friends from China and beyond, plus my husband’s family and friends were all able to celebrate with us and have a special experience at our American wedding in China!

<3