As one of the modern Chinese wedding activities, "fetching the bride" is where
the groom needs to pass a series of tests to prove that he is worthy of the
bride. This is also when the bride's women, i.e., her protectors of her future
happiness, have most of their fun. Normally, early in the morning, the groom and the
groomsmen will decorate the cars and drive them over to the bride's home.
At the door, the bridesmaids will prepare tricky questions for the groom to
answer. The groom not only has to answer all the questions, but he also has
to perform certain acts, such as doing push-ups to show that he's strong enough
to take care of the bride, or sing out his love for the bride in front of many
people. The groomsmen will help the groom to pass all these tests. The last test
is a financial test. The groom has to pay the bridesmaids some 'red envelopes''
[good fortune] as gifts, often containing cash as bribe. After all these trials,
the groom and his groomsmen can enter the house and greet the bride.
We decided that this is too fun an activity to miss, and this way Raphen gets to
see his bride earlier than the western tradition dictates -- before the wedding!
However, we took our liberty in implementing it. Instead of the groom's wedding
party against the bride's wedding party, it became the guys among the families
and friends against the girls among the families and friends. Raphen's sisters
jumped at the opportunity of getting back at Raphen for the early childhood
tortures (or maybe even some more recent ones, Jennie? ;) ) and designed most
of the tests. Around 1:30pm, Raphen and his helpers arrived at the door. The
girls decided to drive them back to the apartment complex door so that they need
to pass individual tests in order to get past several doors to even get to the
apartment. The tests included some logic puzzles, some questions about China
(lucky for Raphen, Jiaying snuck Sheng into his team), singing (good job, Jarrad),
pushups (poor Joel), Princess Bride impressions, and a test of dexterity. Raphen
was lucky enough to have a good collection of groomsmen who had all the necessary
skills covered. When asked for a bribe, Raphen demonstrated his quickness by offering
everybody chocolate and used that distraction to sneak into the apartment to Jiaying's side! Having successfully completed
the trials, we took off to the wedding house!
The wedding ceremony was held at the
Hill's
Memorial Club House in Amherst, MA. It is an old colonial house that
belonged to a rich family and was later donated to Amherst Women's Club. Now it is
rented out for various events, including weddings. We were lucky enough to find
such a beautiful house and have our wedding in it.
We wrote our own wedding ceremony one week before the wedding (yeah I know, we were
busy.) We didn't want it to be Raphen's wedding, or Jiaying's wedding, but ours.
We wanted it to have a blend of both our cultures, and to be uniquely our own.
Therefore, we selected a group of rituals from both western and Chinese wedding
traditions and created our own. We not only celebrated the friendship and love
between the two of us that brought us together to this day, but also paid special
respect to our parents and families that brought us up to who we are.
The unity candle ritual is a popular wedding ritual performed at western weddings in many different forms.
During the ritual, our parents from both sides light two smaller candles
that symbolize our individuality as well as our different heritage. Later, after we exchanged vows we then
transfered the flames from the smaller candles to light the larger unity candle that symbolizes
our new life together. Our parents prepared a short speech where they gave us their best wishes and blessing before they lit the
smaller candles. All their speeches were wonderful and we were deeply touched.
The other ritual we adapted is the tea ceremony. In China, tea ceremony is a
traditional ritual where the couple pay respects to their parents and where the
parents welcome their new son / daughter to the family. Traditionally, it has
two parts. First, when the bride is picked up from her house, tea is served to
her parents. Then the morning after the wedding, the new couple greet the groom's
family (bride's new family) and serve them tea. Here again, we took plenty of
liberty to create our own. After the pronoucement by the Justice of the Peace,
we served tea to both our parents in turn. Thanks to Monica, the Maid of Honor,
who passed the tea cups and arranged the dress train, it was accomplished most
beautifully. Several of our guests commented on the tea ceremony, and decided that
they would like that at their children's wedding. Yay, we started a trend!
Music was another great feature at our wedding, thanks to Raphen's musically
talented family. Raphen's cousin Mark wrote us a wonderful wedding round that
everybody sang at the beginning of the wedding, and we sang another beautiful
song written by Cris Williamson, "Song of the Soul", near the end. Raphen's aunt
Tamara and cousin Loren led singing. They also played the well-known Bach Double, a
violin duet, at the tea ceremony accompanied by our pianist Carolyn.
All this music really added a special touch to the wedding, and we hope everybody
enjoyed it as much as we did.
In Chinese tradition, the banquet is the center piece of the wedding. We had ours
at our favorite Chinese restaurant in the area,
Panda East Restaurant. The manager Jack Lee was very accomodating and created
a multi-course traditional Chinese banquet for us.
One of the highlights of the reception was the toast given by our graduate
advisor Victor. After the dinner, the wedding cake was served! It was a three-tier
square cake decorated with red rose petals and ivy vines. The cake also had
the double happiness symbols, the traditional Chinese wedding symbol, frosted on
the front. It was a stunningly beautiful cake! The cake had three flavors,
chocolate for the bottom tier, lemon for the middle tier, and the top tier was
Raphen's favorite hazelnut cheesecake, which was made from our own recipe. The
cake was a big hit, especially the cheesecake!
Yes, everything on our wedding day was a success, and most important of all, we
are married!
