Rita's wedding

Today was Rita’s wedding part one. The part where the groom’s immediate family come to the brides house and meet the bride’s immediate family for a gathering and then moving on to restaurant for a meal with … well everyone that knows the bride.
The second part is with only the grooms family and friends and the bride’s close family. This includes the actually ‘marriage’ part. I think this system is a great idea as you get twice the food than in most Western weddings.
Of all the staff at Shane, I would say I felt closest to Rita… so when last month she mentioned she was getting married this month…I was a little perplexed. I don’t think anything was ever going to happen, but it’s always nice thinking that something might.
Anyway, she fairly early on invited me to her mother’s house to the see the preparations and traditional rituals on the day. I leapt at the chance.
However yesterday when I asked who else was going, I was laughed at and told that only the close family and friends go to the house: i.e. I wasn’t welcome. So I rang Rita and checked that it was OK, and she said ‘yes, ask Emma how to get there’. But I was then told, of course she said ‘yes’: she’s not gonna want to tell you ‘no’. Still, I persevered and at 8:00 this morning I was knocking on Nick’s door to give him a lift – like he’d asked – but he’s barely awake… so I go alone to meet Gina and follow her to the bride’s house.
The place was beautiful, a farmhouse in the country… with her dad’s small-scale sock factory adjacent. As we pulled up, a party decorator had just finished making these two pillars of balloons within balloons. Emma was already there, looking stunning: she was the nearest thing to a bridesmaid. Mr Chen (Rita’s father) met me and sat me down with some uncles, aunts and cousins. For men in Taiwan, offering a cigarette when they meet someone is considered as polite as we do a handshake, and although I’d sacrificed good manners for good health in Taiwan so far; I thought it wise not to offend the host so soon into the day. The first hour was spent greeting guests and making the couple look perfect. So I entertained one of Rita’s nephews; or prevent him pulling my big nose or ears. I tried to teach him a card trick, but he found it more fun to throw them on the floor… kids! Rita’s mother showed me the photo-album of the pre-wedding pics. It was incredible! A giant, velvet-covered book of thick card pages - professionally bound, and on each page (like an advert for a clothing brand) a great photo of them in coordinating dress in different backdrops. The photos must have taken hours to produce.
I also handed over my red envelope. Rather than be given breadmakers and 4-piece knife sets, at a Taiwanese wedding, everyone brings red envelopes filled with money. I don’t think there is an upper or lower limit, but there are lucky (2,6,9) and unlucky numbers (4). Also the total cannot end in a 0, so 1002 dollars is OK, but 1000 is not. The amount I was thinking about giving doubled, when yesterday I received (as did the other guests) a huge two-tier cookie box; it almost didn’t fit in my rucksack. The money was counted and checked by Uncle Chen and entered into the book.
Midmorning, everyone assembled in the main room. The couple entered; I was stunned at how beautiful she looked – a real smack in the stomach: wow feeling – he looked nice as well. They were then each in turn dressed by the close family in gold (a sign of happiness and love) bracelets, necklace and earrings. Then the bride walked around the room giving the groom’s family cups. They filled these cups with their red envelopes and then gave them back to Rita…reminded me a bit of the African dowry.
From there we convoyed down to the restaurant to meet the other guests. I was a little surprised to learn that we had 42 tables: ten on each. That’s a lot of guests. I started wondering if I knew that many people.

The rest of the Shane crew turned up before long and the banquet began. On each table, were bottled juices, teas …and brandy!
There was an assortment of sugared pistachios, lemon dipped prawns, fried chicken and raw fish with wasubi sauce. The place was the size of an ice hockey stadium. Cheesy love songs were playing through 6foot speakers and in the corner, a vast screen was showing a slideshow of the bride and groom growing up, some recent and some romantic pics. I was chuffed to see myself in two of them!
The food in true Taiwanese style was endless… in no particular order we had gooseblood rice, yam and raisin, crab fried rice, chicken soup (the whole chicken in the pot), seafood medley soup, the finest fish steak I’ve tasted, chicken’s testicles (apparently v expensive – someone has a pic of me eating one), shrimps, pork ribs, oysters, steamed veg, ice-cream and iced fruits. All of which went down very nicely.

The happy couple didn’t get chance to eat much as they spent most of the time being toasted by the guests at each of the 42 tables, but they seemed to be enjoying themselves.
I’m not sure what stage of the day I realized it, but let’s say I had an Andrew Lincoln moment (Love Actually) as I sat camera looking through the lens of the camera … and this was made worse by Linda (boss) demanding that me, her and Rita had a photo with just the 3 of us in front of the 420 guests (it’s like she read my mind)… she later made a joke about me being 1st choice husband: but I was heading back to England…
So all in all: crazy day… especially as we had to go back in at 4 and teach little kids… I could hardly walk!
Hope you enjoy the pictures.