Phase 1 is over

With many thanks to the wedding planner, we managed to get through the "Koh Tai Lei" without too many hiccups. The planner we engaged is Stephen Foong - quite a well known character in the wedding industry. Although I find him a little arrogant at times, he certainly knows his stuff, so I'll forgive him for that. At times I feel a little in the dark, which both C and I find a little annoying, but since he gets the job done, I can overlook that one, too.

He seems quite knowledgeable about various wedding cultures, so if you find yourself in the deep end, he can be quite a useful fellow to throw a life-saver out to you. His contact number is 012-2326683. I must thank the friend who first put me onto him...

It would seem that the ceremony I described in my earlier entry is about as simple as it gets. Funny, I thought it highly complicated already. It certainly makes me wonder how much more involved it can be.

For everything that was given to my family, we had to give something in return, or replace it with a token red packet.

They gave us ten boxes of cakes (I would never have asked for so much if I had known they didn't want any of it back). In the end, we returned two boxes. The rest were distributed to my grandparents and immediate relatives who were living in Malaysia.

They gave us a red packet that was supposed to be a token, but made the mistake of inserting the money into a packet that said, "dowry". Since none of us could read Chinese, we were ignorant of that fact until the wedding planner pointed it out. It was interesting to note that all the red packets came with notes amounting to some denomination involving the figure eight. As such, we were required to return the "dowry" packet in similar form but of lower value.

There was a basket with oranges and I think we returned eight of them. The oranges were supposed to be representative of mandarins, since mandarins were not in season. This is because the Chinese word for Mandarins sounds like the word for "gold".

We returned a red packet for the red cloth they gave us. That red cloth would be hung up on our front doorway the night before the wedding day with the left side hanging longer than the right. I don't know what the reason for that is, but the cloth is supposed to be an announcement to my neighbours that my house is about to have some sort of festivities the next day.

There was a red packet representing the live chickens, although I can't recall whether we returned any money for that. I supposed we would have since the proceedings seemed to follow a "tit for tat" style.

Then there were the two bottles of hard liquor which we returned in kind.

C gave a red packet for my brother's shoes. In return, my parents gave him a pair of pants, belt and wallet. The wallet, of course, had to have money in it, too.

The final item was a set of gold jewelry that I am to wear on my wedding day as I enter the house of my in-laws. It signifies that I come to the family bringing wealth. It also symbolizes the love that my in-laws have extended towards me as a new daughter in their family.