If You Are Attending a Chinese-American Wedding

As the weather gets warmer, you may receive an invitation to an outdoor wedding that will take place this summer. And the wedding couple may be ethnically Chinese, even if you are not, given the large Chinese population in Silicon Valley.

If you indeed just received a wedding invitation from a Chinese-American friend or colleague, you might find no bridal registry coming with it. Although many American-born Chinese brides would register in the American way, most Chinese American brides probably wouldn't. Even those who came here at a relatively early age (like me) and know the American custom of bridal registry (as I did) would rather not do it, because it's too embarrassing to ask people for gifts in Chinese culture.

What should you bring to the wedding, then? That's easy—just cash, a check or a gift card that you know the couple can definitely use, like a Target card, for example. The monetary amount is up to you, but preferably close to what a meal at the reception site would cost you (including your date or spouse).

The Chinese custom of money giving is meant to help the couple pay for the wedding. If you agree with the concept and want to be totally culturally appropriate, put the money or gift card in a red envelope, which you can purchase in a pack for a couple dollars at a Chinese market like Ranch 99 or Marina Food.

If you don't read Chinese, however, make sure you pick a red envelope with no Chinese characters on it, because most of the red envelopes with Chinese characters are used to give children money during Lunar New Year's, and they say "Happy New Year." You can write your best wishes for the couple on the plain red envelope and use that in lieu of a wedding card.

When you bring the stuffed red envelope to the wedding, you will probably find the ceremony just like a mainstream American one, even if the bride and groom are new immigrants from China or Taiwan (Taiwanese are ethnically and culturally Chinese, in case you don't already know). As a matter of fact, weddings in China and Taiwan have been Westernized, as Westernization equaled modernization in the 20th century.

Madam Chiang Kai-Shek was one of the first Chinese brides who dismissed the traditional red gown and red veil. The Wellesley alumna wore all white to become China's first lady in 1927.

From then on, white bridal gowns gradually gained popularity and eventually became the norm in China and Taiwan. Even so, the Chinese didn't completely let go of the traditional wedding color. They made a compromise by having the bride change into a red Mandarin dress for the reception, covering the tables with red cloth and decorating the wall behind the head table with a huge Chinese character that means "double joy" in red.

If you are going to a wedding reception in a Chinese restaurant, you will immediately spot the enormous "double joy" character on the wall behind the head table, where the wedding couple is sitting with both sides of the parents and grandparents (if they are still around), instead of the bridal party. In the meantime, the Chinese-American bride may or may not be in a red Mandarin dress, which has become less and less required over the past 20 years.

Nowadays brides in China and Taiwan can wear Western-style reception dresses, and they don't have to be red. Alternatives include pink, peach, fuchsia, purple and gold. The dress can be partly white but definitely not all white, because white used to be the Chinese funeral color before China's Westernization. Although the Chinese have accepted all-white gowns for the wedding ceremony, they draw the line at the reception, at least so far.

Interestingly, there's a trend (perhaps started by Melania Trump in 2005) for mainstream American brides to also change dresses, but that's mainly to make the bride enjoy dancing at the reception in a lighter dress rather than the bridal gown with a train.

I knew reception dresses in the American culture were usually as white as the bridal gown, and the plan for my Valentine's wedding in 2009 was to have a Western-style reception with lots of ballroom dancing. So I wanted a white reception dress. But I considered the majority of the guests being adult immigrants from Taiwan or China. That made me decide on a white dress with a candy-pink satin trim around its neckline, plus pink rosettes on the off-the-shoulder straps.

It's increasingly common for Chinese American brides, especially those into dancing, to choose a Western-style reception, as Chinese restaurants generally don't have dance floors. If the reception venue named in the invitation you received is a hotel, a vineyard or an Italian restaurant, that means the Chinese-American wedding has a Western-style reception like mine. Everything should look familiar to you, except perhaps just one thing—the couple does not leave right after the bouquet tossing.

My husband and I didn't let our wedding guests see us off. Instead, we saw them off, standing at the exit to say, "Thank you for coming," to each one of them. After choosing a Western-style reception for its more romantic ambiance, we followed this one Chinese custom to show our traditional courtesy to all our guests, ethnically Chinese or not.

This, in my view, is the best thing about living in the multicultural Bay Area. You can do everything in an eclectic way, mixing your favorite elements of different cultures. Here you can eat an omlette for breakfast, sushi for lunch and pasta for dinner. Of course, you get to see all kinds of cultural combinations at Chinese-American weddings!

Editor's note: Crystal Tai is a regular contributor to Cupertino Patch.