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Taiwanese Wedding

Wendy Huang

       “Let’s get married!” We can hear that among all sweet couples. I believe that getting married is the most blissful thing in every couple’s eyes. When couples say “I do” and make their promises to each other, how wonderful it is. People all over the world have dreamed for this precious moment. However, the process of having a wedding is not necessarily as simple as you imagine. It has lots of complicated customs to follow. Wedding ceremonies differ in different countries. In Taiwan, we also have our own traditional customs to follow.

First, a single man and a single woman will be arranged to have a date by a matchmaker. If they have a good date and would like to have a further relationship, the matchmaker will bring the man’s and the woman’s “eight characters” to a fortuneteller, including the year, month, day and hour of their birth. The fortuneteller plays an important role before the engagement. We have a superstition of going to a fortuneteller to ask whether the couple is well matched. A marriage sometimes is decided by a fortuneteller’s words. If they do match according to their “eight characters”, the couple will have an engagement.

In the process of getting engaged, gifts are often needed on both bride’s and groom’s sides. The groom’s family presents betrothal gifts, such as bridal cakes and an engagement ring, to the bride’s family. Once the bride’s family has accepted the gifts, they are committed to each other, and the bride’s family will distribute bridal cakes to their relatives to announce their daughter’s engagement. In addition, the groom’s family will send the bride’s family a token amount of money and various wedding gifts. To show sincerity to the bride’s family, the groom’s family must prepare six or twelve presents for the engagement. That is the way the groom commits himself to the engagement to the bride.

Third, it is time to have a big ceremony and a banquet for the wedding. The bride and the groom bow to the bride’s parents to give them farewell and thank them for raising the bride. Then the wedding procession returns to the groom’s home. The groom’s family invites their friends and relatives to a wedding ceremony and have a banquet to celebrate it. In the city, couples usually hold their wedding banquets in large restaurants, whereas in the countryside, they do it outdoors. In the banquet, all the dishes have special meanings, such as a dessert named “Sweet dumplings”, which is a blessing for the couple wishing them to be sweet and happy forever. Finally, the bride and the groom toast to everyone to thank their guests for attending the wedding.

From getting engaged to getting wedded, a couple and their families have so many things to prepare. Getting married is one of the biggest events in everyone’s life. I believe that other countries may have such a complicated process and ceremony as what we have here. However, no matter what kind of wedding you have in your country, I believe it must leave the best and the most precious memory in your life.