The Chinese Wedding Shop: A Traditional Wedding For the Modern Bride
2023-08-10

Another year, another Editor’s Choice Awards round-up.

In a time where culture and heritage are losing their popularity with the modern couple, The Chinese Wedding Shop has reinvented the contemporary wedding concept with its traditional touch. And not surprisingly, this customary Chinese bridal shop has made it into our list once again (for the seventh year running), and for good reason.

Since 2009, The Chinese Wedding Shop has proven time and again as the go-to traditional vendor for all aspiring brides to honour their dialect group’s customary wedding processes.

But just what exactly do these wedding customs entail? Well, it all begins with…

Betrothal (Guo Da Li) Day

As its name suggests, Betrothal Day is a significantly auspicious day that involves the groom bringing pre-discussed gifts to the bride’s house. This array of betrothal gifts is nothing short of extravagant — featuring a fully-endowed betrothal package for the bride’s family during Guo Da Li.

Within these betrothal gifts, you’ll find a tray of dowry money, gold jewellery, mandarin oranges, embellished traditional tiered wedding baskets, traditional wedding biscuits, and more, according to the couple’s dialect group.

At first glance, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed by the sheer number of components needed for the dowry package. But that’s exactly where The Chinese Wedding Shop comes into the picture, with their pre-packed Betrothal (Guo Da Li) Packages.

Betrothal (Guo Da Li) Package

But these Guo Da Li Packages aren’t your typical run-of-the-mill, mass-produced hamper set. Oh, no, instead, they’re available in the five dialect group variations for Hokkien, Teochew, Cantonese, Hakka, and Hainanese.

Each package comes with the following items:

●     Two pairs of Dragon and Phoenix candles

●     Two sets of wedding biscuits*

●     Two boxes of pork leg cans / Two sets of walnuts*

●     Two sets of auspicious wedding grains (e.g. red dates, longan, wintermelon strips, lotus seeds, lily bulbs, and rock sugar)

●     Dragon and Phoenix Tray

●     Everlasting red cloth

●     Teochew wax (For Teochews only)

●     Groom’s Angbao Set (consists of Dowry Money, Nappy, and Open Car Door red packets)

●     Destiny discs

●     Betrothal tiered wedding baskets (FOC for three days)

●     Double happiness stickers for oranges

●     Organza bags for alcohol

●     Procedure list with step-by-step instructions and meanings behind each item

*Depends on dialect group.

Each package is further customisable according to the specific family requests.

Next, we have…

Setting the Matrimonial Bed (The An Chuang Ceremony)

For the unacquainted, think of setting the matrimonial bed like doing lou hei… but for your bed. It involves decorating the couple’s bed with items to bless them with a blissful and harmonious marriage filled with ample offspring.

Although this idea may seem rather old-fashioned, the sentimentality behind it is still meaningful.

Similar to the Guo Da Li Ceremony, the An Chuang Ceremony is to be conducted on an auspicious date and time too. Typically, doing it between one to three days before the wedding is ideal. Otherwise, consulting an auspicious date calendar might be useful too.

During this ceremony, the groom’s parents will be the ones setting the bed. If they’re not available, a married couple can do it too.

Bed-Setting Set

Again, The Chinese Wedding Shop simplifies these intricate ceremonies for you by providing a pre-packed Bed-Setting Set that contains all the key ingredients needed like auspicious grains, red dates, dried longans, peanuts, lotus seeds, red beans, lily bulbs, candies, destiny coins, and so on.

A pair of Mandarin oranges and Thuja leaves to symbolise prosperity and fertility should also be prepared for this tradition.

And of course, this set comes complete with a detailed set of step-by-step instruction guide to perform this intricate ceremony.

Combing the Bride’s Hair

You can think of the Hair Combing Ceremony as a ritual to ‘pass on/bestow good blessings onto the bride’.

Back in the day, this was traditionally performed by a matchmaker or married couple with good fortune for obvious reasons. But nowadays, it’s widely accepted for the couple’s parents to perform this act too because it represents the parents as earning good fortune themselves by welcoming their new son-in-law or daughter-in-law into the family.

Hair Combing Set

That’s why, The Chinese Wedding Shop offers a Hair-Combing Set that includes a comb, a ruler, a hand-held mirror, a pair of gold scissors sealed, and a red string tied into a knot along with auspicious recital lines for the ceremony. Couples and their parents are highly encouraged to recite these lines together during the hair combing.

Now, isn’t that a sweet sight to behold?

Fetching the Bride aka Gate-Crashing Fun

We believe everyone’s familiar with this next fun part… the famous tradition of gate-crashing activities!

Come the morning of the wedding day, everyone’s a bundle of nerves, jitters, and excitement of course, for the big day ahead. Gate-crashing activities are part of the whole fetching-the-bride process where the groom will assemble his entourage to fetch his beloved bride-to-be from her house.

Essentially, the gate-crashing challenges act as roadblocks. They involve the bridesmaids concocting a series of games and activities to make the entourage ‘suffer’ and prevent them from successfully retrieving the bride.

Nappy Red Packet + Mandarin Oranges Set

But before whisking away his bride like a knight in shining armour, tradition dictates the groom present a Nappy Red Packet along with a tray of Mandarin oranges to the bride’s mother — as a form of gratitude and filial piety towards raising the daughter up.

Note: The Nappy Red Packet is part of The Chinese Wedding Shop’s Betrothal (Guo Da Li) Package. Or you can get it as an ala-carte.

Red Umbrella

On the way to the car, either the matchmaker or the bride’s father will shelter the bride with a red umbrella all the way to the wedding car (好命伞). She then gets to keep the umbrella, a blessing for a smooth marriage life ahead.

The bride may also choose to toss a wedding hand-held fan out of the wedding car prior to driving to the groom’s place. This symbolises tossing away all of the bride’s bad habits in favour of good virtues as she marries into the groom’s family.

All in all, gate-crashing is loads of fun, laughter, and chaos for the whole tribe.

Tea Ceremony

Now, it’s time to quieten things down with the elegant and quintessential tradition, the Tea Ceremony.

This tradition involves the bride and groom kneeling before their parents, and serving tea to them as an act of filial piety. A pair of kneeling cushions is prepared for the couple’s knees, to both soften the kneeling and wish them a prosperous future together (富贵命).

Apart from their parents, the newlyweds will also serve tea to their grandparents and other elders in the family.

Ceremonial Tea Set as part of Dowry Package

For couples keen on performing the Tea Ceremony, The Chinese Wedding Shop offers the ceremonial tea set as part of their Dowry Package.

A beautiful blend between modernity and culture

As we become more westernised as a society, fewer couples are embracing these heritage wedding cultures.

This is why The Chinese Wedding Shop does an excellent job of providing a contemporary approach to a modern Chinese wedding, by providing different packages for every single Chinese wedding tradition you wish to partake in.

Indeed, they’re the best-known vendor for Chinese wedding customs for a reason. They have all the packages and hamper sets you’ll need from start to finish of the entire Chinese wedding process.

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