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Adding Asian
Elements and Traditions to Your Wedding
By Frances
Kai-Hwa Wang, AAV Contributing Editor
I love raising
eyebrows by cheekily telling people that I was married in red.
To tell
the truth, though, I knew little about Chinese wedding
traditions then -- just what I had seen in movies. I thought it
would be "cool" to wear one of those old-fashioned embroidered
two-piece silk dresses, and maybe have my hair done up in one of
those fancy headdresses. All I could find, however, were
sequined dance costumes. A family friend had two Peking Opera
headdresses, but they were a bit over the top.
When my
great aunt in Tianjin sent a red cloth veil, I realized that
"doing it traditionally" required that I would be basically
blindfolded. With this red cloth draped over my head for the
whole ceremony and reception, I would see nothing and nobody
would see me. Out of the question—I wanted beautiful
photographs! And so began the compromises, a search to create
something new.
Incorporating Asian elements or traditions into one’s wedding is
increasingly popular, but not always easy for us second- and
third-generation Asian Americans. We may not know all
the traditions, and for mixed marriages (of various
configurations) in particular, we may have a multitude of
conflicting obligations to fulfill and relatives to please. As
the saying goes, it’s not
really your wedding, but the wedding your mother never had.
(In my case, this truism became more complicated still:
My mother thought
my yen for a "traditional" wedding was weird. Although white is
a Chinese funeral color, my mother, my grandmother, and even my
great-grandmother had all gotten married the "modern" way, in
white Western wedding gowns.)
So, if you
want to do more than use a cheesy "Oriental" font on the
invitations, you will need to research and seek advice to best
update old Asian traditions and meld them gracefully with
Western ones. This is especially true if the marriage is going
to be interethnic, interracial, or interfaith. (My husband at
this point interjects that if he had to do it again, he would
forgo the Christian ceremony altogether: "Why try to meld them?
If you are going to do it, why not just go all the way?") Yet,
the extra research, family outreach, and serious thought is
worthwhile--you end up with a really meaningful,
well-considered, personalized ceremony.
Do Your
Research
Research
the basic wedding traditions of your Asian heritage and Western
ceremonies to know your options and understand the details of
the rituals that are your raw materials. Some rituals are easy
to incorporate, such as putting earrings on the Vietnamese bride
after the exchange of rings, including marriage sponsors and a
cord ceremony in a Catholic Filipino wedding ceremony, or adding
bridesmaids and groomsmen to a Hindu ceremony. Other rituals
have specific religious significance that cannot be randomly
tucked into a ceremony of a different faith. Some resources
follow.
Ask both
sets of parents (and each other) what is really important to
them and where you have room to compromise. Indian-American
Anita Vernekar wanted to have a Quaker wedding until her mother
said in no uncertain terms that she could only have a Hindu
wedding. End of discussion. When Ivan Li got married, his
Caucasian bride’s family wanted a small intimate wedding, but
his parents wanted a big Chinese banquet—so they had both. It
worked out because while the wedding ceremony is the most
important part for Westerners, the banquet is the most important
part for Chinese people.
Ask
religious leaders for ideas of what they can do and what is not
acceptable. A Hindu pundit I met offers different ceremonies,
including a shorter, simpler one with more English and more
egalitarian content for the American-born. If the religious gulf
is too wide to bridge, you may have to have two separate
ceremonies, or leave some aspects (such as making offerings to
the ancestors’ spirits) outside the other church. When
Filipina-American MaryDell Paragas married her Indian-American
husband Shaum, they had both a Catholic wedding and a Hindu
wedding. A Thai-Caucasian couple wrote to TheKnot.com that they
had a Buddhist blessing the night before their Christian
wedding.
Then go
exploring in your ethnic neighborhood, preferably with a
relative who knows what's what. My Aunt Suzie took me down to
Oakland Chinatown to find red and gold Chinese invitations which
we printed in Chinese and English (added bonus: Chinatown
printers are much cheaper). My mom took me to
San Jose’s
Japantown, where we found little red chopsticks to give away as
favors (an idea we stole from my cousin).
Adapt
Traditions
Be open to
adapting old traditions. Shu Shu Costa, author of Wild Geese
and Tea—An Asian American Wedding Planner, writes that
traditionally, a Korean groom was supposed to give a live goose
to the bride’s family to show fidelity, but these days, most
people give a wooden goose instead. When Sammy Liu, a
third-generation Japanese American, married, she and her
girlfriends spent hours folding 1,000 gold origami cranes (the
bride is supposed to fold 999 cranes and the groom folds 1 to
symbolize devotion to each other). But now, you can buy your
1,000 cranes already folded, arranged, and framed against a
black background in the shape of your family crest. Hansa Mehta
told India Abroad that Indian weddings in America are "a
melting pot of customs from different regions of India."
Although her American-born daughter is having a Gujerati
wedding, she is going to mahendi her hands and feet (which the
Gujerati do not do) because she feels that is an essential part
of an "Indian wedding," and they are serving Mugalhai food
instead of Gujerati food.
Other ways
to incorporate Asian elements include incorporating your
family’s language into the ceremony with songs, music, prayers,
and readings; using red and gold for the flowers and
decorations; bilingual and/or ethnic invitations; wearing ethnic
clothing for the wedding (when else are you going to have a
chance to wear a gorgeous hanbok, kimono, cheong sam, ao dai, or
sari?) or changing into ethnic clothing for the reception; using
Asian print fabrics and papers. Sara Goldberg and Claude Goetz
reported to TheKnot.com that for their Jewish-Japanese wedding,
Claude's Japanese mother sewed the huppah, a Jewish wedding
canopy, from an antique family heirloom obi, a silk brocade gold
and green sash worn with a kimono, which they then attached to
four bamboo poles. If you are worried about possibly being tacky
or inauthentic, that is why you need to do good research.
Of course
the easiest way to "Asianize" any event is with food. Violette
Paragas had a Hindu wedding followed by a Filipino feast. At
Melissa Lam’s Chinese-Jewish wedding, they had blintzes, potato
pancakes, lo mein noodles (for long life), chicken (represents
wealth), and fortune cookies. Their rehearsal dinner was a
Chinese banquet, and the post-wedding brunch was lox and bagels.
(TheKnot.com) [Note: If a large percentage of the guests are
going to be East Asian, do not serve a lot of cheese or cream
sauces or everyone may feel ill from lactose intolerance.]
It is also
popular to include a page in the wedding program describing and
explaining the rituals so that your guests will also understand
the meanings. Make sure everyone in the wedding party is briefed
before the wedding, too. At one Hindu wedding I attended, the
pundit kept asking rhetorical questions, like "What is love?"
which the Caucasian groom kept trying to answer—once, twice,
three times.
Traditions Beyond the Ceremony and Reception
Finally,
keep in mind that traditions are not always manifested as formal
rituals. I once attended a wedding where the photographer, who
had worked numerous Asian weddings, suggested that they take a
photo with the entire extended family--which in some cases can
extend into the hundreds--because that is what Asians do. The
Caucasian bride decided that she did not want any photographs of
the extended family taken because she thought that was too many
people for a "family" photograph. After the ceremony, when the
couple encouraged "everyone" to go on to the reception while
they remained to sit for photographs, the Chinese relatives took
that to mean "everyone except family," and also stayed waiting
to pose for the photograph that never came. For the bride, it
was just a photograph; for the family, it was a part of the
wedding.
The main
thing is to do your research, then do what feels right.
Incorporate the rituals that have resonance for you and skip the
ones that feel foolish. As long as you understand and respect
the meaning behind the traditions, you can adapt them. Weddings
can be long, stressful, marathon pageants, but it is actually
supposed to be fun. Besides, in the end, no matter what you do,
most guests will leave feeling that it was a beautiful ceremony.
I had a
long red silk cheong sam (qi pao) embroidered with a gold and
silver dragon and phoenix made in San Francisco Chinatown for
$200 by the man who makes the cheong sams for all the Miss
Chinatowns. It was gorgeous, form-fitting, with slits up to
there, but when people asked, "Is that a traditional Chinese
wedding dress?" I answered no.
It was not
traditional,
but it was Chinese and it was made in
America.
Sort of like me.
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