I think this is the 4th wedding that I attended this year and just a big CONGRATULATIONS to the new couple! It should be the 5th but I couldn't attend one since I'm stranded overseas for school. Anyways each wedding has a different style and I am always glad to be able to attend one because I am truly happy for the couple and happiness should be shared!
While the weddings which I was invited to are usually church weddings, this wedding was conducted in the form of a traditional Hong Kong Chinese/ Cantonese style, which is unusual in this era. Of course, there are modifications and I was not part of the whole entourage, but it just intrigued my curious little mind. (^.^')
#Day 1 - Dinner with family
We arrived at the groom's grandma's house for family dinner and went up to the rooftop to spot the sunset. Houses in the New Territories are usually peppered without official land planning, so they do appear messy and ghetto. See the green panels on the left of the second photo? That's where the new Express Rail Link (XRL) train depot will be located, which displaced lots of local residences and farmland in the process. That, is Hong Kong for you :(
We had 盆菜 (punchoi, literally translated as pot vegetable), to be shared by all 17 of us I think? It used to be a traditional dish eaten together with the rest of the villagers during celebrations, whereby everyone contribute some morsels of food to be cooked in a pot/ basin. Nowadays this can be ordered an picked up from specialty shops. There are many ingredients inside, some of which are: large calm slices (I initially thought they were abalone slices oops), prawns, duck, radish, tofu skin, pork skin, yam, pork, chinese mushroom, fishball etc. We added some cooked chicken, vegetables, and enoki mushrooms in at the end too!
While we were having dinner, the groom went to have a shower with pomelo leaves and changed into a new set of underwear + pajamas. At the moment the clock struck 8pm, the groom needed to be seated in front of this table for the "combing" ritual, where a woman with a good marriage (still married, have a son and a daughter at least) would do the combing while saying auspicious phrases. Not sure did the woman trim his hair too? It was too crowded for me to see everything. And the ritual ended with the groom eating red glutinous rice balls.
After that, the groom disappeared to do his other errands because Chinese Cantonese weddings require quite a lot of rituals and he went back to decorate his marital bed I guess? Something to do with changing a new set of bed sheets and sprinkling some seeds and dates etc onto the made bed, then also having children to jump on this bed and eat the sweets on the bed? I guess it has to do with wishing the new couple to have lots of offspring heh.
If you can read Chinese and want to know more about the whole list of Chinese Cantonese wedding rituals, click
here.
#Day 2 - Actual wedding
We arrived in time for the decorating of the wedding car early morning. The couple initially wanted to take the porsche, but its height and structure made it difficult to secure the kitties. Bentley it is!
We then proceeded up to the hotel room/ suite for the fetching of the bride. Which is cut short due to the close auspicious timing deadline (^-^*)
While the couple's entourage head towards the Chinese temple for the next part of rituals, we all dispersed into separate ways to have a short rest before making our way back to the hotel for the wedding banquet.
Well since it is Chinese tradition (or HK tradition?) to play mahjong for a few hours before the dinner banquet, I got my bored-to-death self to have a short walk around the hotel vicinity. Gold coast seems like a nice place to chill. Not that I'll be back since it's so far away from where I stay.
& my favourite part: Food! - A sumptuous buffet spread to end this weekend celebration. ٩(^ᴗ^)۶
