To Tea or not to Tea...

79 days to go.

As a CBC (Canadian Born Chinese) I have always tried to find balance between my Western upbringing and my Chinese background. Now that I’m in the thick of wedding planning I started to think if I should be doing a traditional tea ceremony. For those of you who don’t know, in Chinese culture, it is tradition to have the bride and groom serve tea to elders so they can offer the happy couple their blessings (often in the form of a lucky red envelope full of money). I couldn’t help but wonder, was I jipping myself by not having one? I know, a wedding is not a cash grab and it’s about celebrating your love. But lets be honest, we all would love to celebrate with a little extra padding in the bank account right?

This led me to think about all the other non-Asian things we were doing for the wedding. For the most part our wedding is western 100%, no 10 course Chinese dinner with shark fin soup and crab claws; instead it’s a 5 course meal with soup, salad, duck, steak or fish. There will be no red “kay-po” (the red Chinese dress you see hostesses wear at Chinese banquet halls); instead I will change into a modern party dress. And finally, no double happiness symbol hanging in the back….My friends and I call it the Chinese Gong Show. We find that those of us getting married in our generation usually opt for the western wedding; the traditional Asian wedding is more to cater the family, not in all cases, but most. Strange thing is I used to want all of that, especially the food. But when planning the big event I found that it wasn’t right for me. First of all I don’t have a Chinese restaurant in Ottawa that I like enough to trust my wedding to and the cost is pretty much the same as a western wedding if not more. I always thought it would be cheaper. So to satisfy the older Asians in the family we will have a dinner for immediate family the night before at a Chinese restaurant.

The more I think about it the more I realized we made the right decision for us. I mean Prince Charming is Vietnamese, not Chinese, and not all traditions are the same, though they do take part in Tea Ceremonies. To have a western wedding would just be less stressful for the both of us, rather then trying to incorporate 2 cultures and then you have family trying to chime in. If we did decide to have an Asian wedding we probably would have opted to have the wedding in my hometown of Toronto. That would have been logistically more difficult. But to make it easier on ourselves, and since we are both pretty “Canadianized” we are not bowing to any Asian traditions. So X-nay on the tea ceremony idea….I think it may just be me creating a make work project for myself since the wedding is fast approaching and new ideas pop into my head all the time. I guess at the end of the day it really is more important to have our day, our way rather then putting in a ceremony simply for a potential cash grab and to make the parents happy… If they want tea, it will be served with dessert, or they can opt for coffee :)

Bridesmaid...zilla?

82 days to go

I know I’ve been MIA recently, Prince Charming and I have been working overtime to make sure that Bedazzle’s list gets smaller and smaller. I am happy to say that my list has been cut down to more then half. With less then 90 days to go I’m really starting to get my butt into gear. What annoys me it the stuff I can’t get done yet, like my seating chart and place cards since all RSVPs have yet to be received (they have till July 10^th, 2010) but aside from that everything seems to be on track.

Flipping through an online wedding forum I came across a post about bridesmaids which was accompanied my this article

http://www.marieclaire.com/celebrity-lifestyle/articles/living/bad-bridesmaids

This got me thinking … have Bridezilla’s given birth to these Bridesmaidzilla’s or is this a new creature like the article says born from years of frienamy resentment, jealously, cattiness and self centeredness.

I have been in both situations; I was a maid of honor for my sister (though I was much younger and immature at the time) and I am now a bride. Looking back in my Maid of Honor experience I just didn’t really care to be honest. I was in my early 20’s and more into what I was doing in my own life then my sisters wedding. I didn’t complain or cause a scene, like the women in the article, I was just there. I didn’t help with much I did what I had to do and that was that. To me what I was doing on Saturday night was more important; chalk it up to immature self-centeredness I guess. Now that I’m a Bride I feel bad for not helping my sister more, if I was the person I am now I would be on top of everything with no complaints, guaranteed. In fact I enjoy the planning of showers and things like that.

Currently, in my case I only have one maid of honor, my best friend since high school. I would consider myself to be a really easygoing bride in this regard. She is picking her own dress as long as the colour is appropriate, aside from that….I don’t even know what the dress looks like. Kind of scary when I think about it, but I trust her. She is making the trip back from Asia to be here for me, to have here in a dress she likes, which sits just fine by me.

But I do know that my situation is an exception. I have been in Bridal salons where bridesmaids have been in tears over the dress their Bride wants them to wear. I’ve also seen some bridesmaid’s gang up on the bride and tell her what they will and will not wear. Given, every situation is different and not all bridesmaids are hell bent on causing tension for a Brides, and not all Brides are vengeful enough to make their girls look silly in sea foam taffeta just to up their own attractiveness, but it is out there, no matter how much we may roll our eyes and shack our heads in disbelief women are catty and I stand 110% behind this statement. Intentions may be good but all you need is a small feeling of competition or envy and it can all go down hill. Be it competition or envy over the size of the ring, the wedding, the honeymoon, the shoes...whatever, all you need is a small bit of negative fuel to ignite an insecurity and BOOM it can explode into something you never thought possible. I believe it’s often due to low self-esteem and confidence on either end. What else but our own insecurities could cause us to turn on our nearest and dearest friends? If I am confidant in who I am I wouldn’t need to put down others around me to make myself feel better. I wouldn’t have to bully my Bride or dress my Bridesmaids in ugly dresses. If I was confident with who I am would consider my bridesmaids feeling and as a bridesmaid I would smile for the pictures and make sure my dear friend the Bride was taken care of...sea foam and all.

I don’t think you can ever predict that someone you thought was your good friend (good enough to be a party of your wedding party or good enough for you to be their bridesmaid) could turn into a red eyed monster taffeta but I think it does help if you forget about all the silly details and just remember what is important; true friends are there for each other, they don’t want to compete, they don’t wish to make you less attractive to make themselves look better and they don’t want to pull you down….if they do, well, maybe you have the wrong friends.