Chapter 12: Double Happiness needs a Double Party.

My Big Fat Guangdong Wedding

Chapter 12.  Double Happiness needs a Double Party.

Part 1.  First Wedding Party – Lunch

 

We dragged out of bed early on Saturday morning.  Yaaay!  We’re married!  Oh no, we’ve got two parties to throw today. 

The hotel had a breakfast buffet, so that was one less issue to worry about.  Cantonese Twin 2 showed up just after breakfast with her Mary Kay bag to attack my darling’s face with an inch thick coating of assorted stuff.  Then Cantonese Twin #1 (aka Scooter Girl) showed up to get her face done while my darling went to the hair salon next door to the hotel entrance.  Her parents took our darling daughter across the street to the Carrefour building to have her hair done at one of those places that sell over-priced hair clips and promises to do your hair up with them for free at any time (and always wants to sell you new hair clips since the ones you bought last week are now completely out of style and look terribly old-fashioned).

I then got a phone call from my darling.  “I need to talk.  Can she hear you?”  I retreated to the farthest corner of the suite.  “It’s too much makeup.  If I change it, will she be offended?”  I told her to blame the hair salon for ruining the makeup, returned to the front room, and generously suggested that Cantonese Twin 2 could leave that big heavy makeup bag in the suite so that she wouldn’t have to carry it around – thus giving my darling a chance to redo the makeup to her own liking.  I then had the twins help me carry all the clothing, candy, gold jewelry, and other assorted items over to the restaurant.

We carried all the stuff into the VIP banquet room that had been reserved.  Workers were busily arranging the tables.  The person in charge (via the translation of the twins) seemed blissfully unaware of the initial discussions with one manager and the discussions with another manager the night before.  He was convinced that the clothing would be changed in and stored in the smaller VIP room (the one that smelled like an overused stale ashtray ).  The workers were planning on using the changing room in my VIP room to shove the dirty dishes into (completely ignoring the separate alcove that was obviously designed exactly for this purpose ). Happily, since Twin 1 had been there the night before helping me bring the wine over from TrustMart, I told her to re-explain reality to the guy in charge and to say that there would be absolutely ZERO changes from the agreed on plan.

Luckily for me, no one on the staff was ready to deal with the wrath of a crazy foreigner backed by 2 loyal and potentially vicious local girls, so they caved in pretty easily.  Naturally, after I’d wasted 20 minutes getting everything back to just like had been agreed with the manager the night before, the manager walks in.

She seemed pleased that everything was going exactly according to plan. 

There still were some minor setup issues.  Thankfully, my lovely bride arrived and managed to straighten out most of the last few items.  We then changed our clothing (her into a white dress from the wedding studio, me into my Mao suit – temporarily minus jacket since winter finally gave up about 4 days earlier) and headed up to the front of the restaurant to greet our guests.  This left her parents and another dear friend from her hometown (the lovely and talented woman who first introduced us) in charge of the banquet room.

We had 8 seats available at the head table.  Me, my darling bride, our lovely daughter, and her parents took up 5.  There was some talk of fitting in her uncle’s family, but that would have been 5 more people squeezed into 3 places.  I also mentioned that none of my US family could make it, but that I counted some of my dearest Chinese friends as sisters and brothers.  Our dear friend who introduced us got place #6

 

 

The Cantonese Twins took places 7 and 8.

 

 

The Twins and my little tiny little Hunan friend had a table just inside the restaurant entrance to handle gifts, signing in guests, handing out bags of wedding candy, etc.  We stood just outside the entrance beside the wedding poster from the photo studio.  I had a camera just across the doorway from us set up and used a remote to take pics of us and the guests as they arrived.

 

 

The universe was kind and decided to rebalance some of the karma from all the issues on Friday (either that or I’d left less options for Murphy to take advantage of my official Family Curse this time).  Guests arrived, most within the 30 minutes we’d allotted, and no other massive issues arose.  Just after 12:30, we moved everything from the front of the restaurant and went back to the banquet room.  I slipped in for a moment, set the camera to video mode, and parked it at the front of the room, pointed down the red carpet towards the entrance doors, and ran back out.  While I tried not to sweat too much during the 2 minutes I’d need to wear the jacket, our darling daughter  went into the room and introduced us in English and Mandarin.  We came in, crossed a predetermined line on the floor, and the confetti cannons . . . didn’t fire.  The safeties were still on and there was a bit of a struggle to arm them.  Finally, 4 non-sequential pops happened and we got a nice coating of metal foil (a guest’s son had nailed us with one at the front of the restaurant earlier – that one was all paper).

We greeted the crowd and our daughter took back one of the microphones and asked everyone to wait a moment.  We then retreated to the changing room, switched into our traditional red outfits, and came out again.  This time, crossing the pre-determined trigger line worked a little better and the confetti cannons went off mostly at the right moment.

The ceremony was conducted by our darling daughter in Mandarin and English.  We’d intended to do the rings first, but our daughter hadn’t noted that change on her draft copy of the script, so I ended up kissing the bride first.  Somehow the safeties got stuck again, since the next round of confetti was supposed to happen 3 seconds into the kiss.  After a few seconds too long, I looked up to see some consultations going on regarding one of the safeties, then they all opened fire.  I took the opportunity to grab a second kiss as the foil rained down over us.  We then exchanged the rings and went back to the table with all the alcohol , cigarettes , and cake (that table just needed a slot machine and a stripper to get a complete set of vices into one place ).  We cut the cake, I opened a bottle of champagne, and poured 2 glasses.  We then stepped forward, thanked our guests again for attending, raised our glasses to toast them, and then intertwined our arms to drink the champagne as the final round of confetti went off (at the correct moment).  By this point, the confetti was ankle-deep in a few places and we were both covered with it.  In a statement that would have been very strange under any other circumstances, I leaned over to my beautiful bride and whispered, “I’m all shiny and sparkly.”   I think I ended up drinking some of the metal foil. 

A buffet for a wedding has some advantages.  You only pay per person, not per table.  There are no delays waiting for food to come out.  There’s one BIG disadvantage if it’s your wedding.  You can’t easily get to the food without getting stopped for pictures, toasts, and general chat.  I figured that this would happen, so planned ahead and had eaten more than usual for breakfast.

 

 

My biggest worry with such a large guest list was getting embarrassed one way or another.  If too many people showed up, the room would get too crowded.  If too few showed up, I’d look not just like an idiot, but like an unpopular idiot.   The room was set with 84 places and there were 66 people in attendance.  That worked out just about perfectly. 

The head of MilliCharity and almost all of the board of directors attended.

 

 

Two of my fellow teachers from when I worked at the Dongguan Translation Center made it.

 

 

In 2007, I went to Guangzhou for a day.  While there, I bungee jumped off a mountain to impress a very lovely girl. I’d only seen her that one time before and she’s married now, but she still showed up at my wedding.

 

 

My police/security buddies from DragonBoat racing attended along with a dozen or so other villagers.

 

 

I rent my house in the village from one of my former students.  His wife is a yoga teacher in Dongguan.

 

 

All but a tiny handful of my dearest Chinese friends attended.

 

 

No foreigners were in attendance, but the groom had suspiciously non-Chinese looking hair and eyes. 

We made the rounds and toasted each group.  I’d previously grabbed a large glass, filled it mostly with Sprite, and poured a little baijiu in on top, both to kill the bubbles and to convince anyone who sniffed the glass to try to verify of the authenticity of its contents (one party mostly taken care of, but I still had one to go, so needed to be able to walk in a reasonably straight line).

 

 

As we began winding things down, Scooter Girl was eating yet another plate of food (I think no one feeds her when she’s not in Dongguan).  I found one remaining unfired confetti cannon and showered her with foil.  Guess I’ll have to buy a few more to do midnight confetti assaults in the village. 

My initial plan was to not set any alcohol on the tables, just to have people go back and get it from the drinks cigs, and cake bar at the back of the room.  Some helpful person at the restaurant set out a wine glass (filled with a 50/50 mix of wine/Sprite – China’s greatest contribution to international wine culture ) at each place setting.  This, combined with the party being at lunchtime ended up resulting in far less alcohol being drunk that we’d planned for.  Only 3 bottles of baijiu and less than 6 bottles of wine were consumed.  Happily, the otherwise less than competent place that sold us the baijiu does take returns of unopened cases, so 2 cases can go back.  I’ll be bringing a bottle or two of red wine to any village dinner parties for the next couple of months.

Someone must have liked the cigarettes.  I only saw a few smoked in the room, but both cartons were empty by the end of the party. 

Finally, we ended the lunch. 

Now it was time to move on to Wedding Party #2 – Dancing and singing at our wedding KTV party. 

 

 <– Back to Chapter 11.          –> Chapter 12. Part 2.  KTV – Wedding Karaoke  –>