When to have Chinese Wedding Banquet?

[SoonIHope]

This is going to be long because it''s really complicated...

We have set our date for our wedding (!!!) for June 23, 2007, which will be in upstate New York, about 6 hours away for the closest friends and family, and many hours more than that for everyone else. (My family and friends are all over the place, mainly North & South Carolina, California, and Boston, but most of my fiance''s are in the NYC area). Because people will definitely have to go up for the whole weekend for our ceremony, my fiance thinks a significant number of his family will probably not go, and will care more about the Chinese wedding banquet anyway, so we''re going to have that in New York City on a different weekend (instead of trying to caravan everyone from the ceremony site).

But now we are having a LOT of problems trying to decide when exactly the banquet should be, since most of MY friends and family will have to drive a long time and/or fly up for both, so I really don''t want people to just decide not to come to the banquet because it''s too much money/trouble/time to travel up to this general part of the country twice. The solution that occurred to me was to have them a few weeks apart (maybe 3?) because if they''re one week apart then you either have to take a full week off of work or travel two weekends back to back - which pretty much guarantees NO ONE will do it. My fiance is concerned, though, that if we do that, the banquet won''t seem like it''s "part" of the wedding; it''s just sort of an unrelated party, which he thought his family might find kind of offensive (ie. the "real" wedding is the western ceremony upstate, and the banquet is just an afterthought). But from my point of view, it seems like it would be even worse if we had them one week apart, because then NONE of my friends and family (other than my parents, brother, and a couple friends who live in NYC) would come to the Chinese banquet, so it would be even more divisive in terms of my (non-Chinese) family all at the western ceremony, and then the Chinese banquet having ONLY his Chinese family. So I really want to get BOTH families to come to BOTH of them, but I just don''t know how to make that happen.

Does anyone have any suggestions??? Should the banquet be before or after the ceremony? Do you think it would be bad to hold them a few weeks apart? HELP!!!! I''ve only been engaged a week and a half and I''m already starting to panic.

 

[YumCarrots]

How about having both on the same weekend? I know it sounds stressful, but I think only very close friends and families will actually fly/drive up for 2 events that are relatively close to each other. Maybe you can have a Chinese-style banquet as the rehearsal dinner the night before? That way, both sides of the families can attend and experience both the eastern and western cultures and traditions. And in your western ceremony/banquet, you can even wear a traditional Chinese gown (chi pao) or have a tea ceremony, so that your fiance side of the family will still feel like they are "part" of the wedding.

 

[SoonIHope]

Date: 1/6/2006 2:27:02 PM
Author: YumCarrots
How about having both on the same weekend? I know it sounds stressful, but I think only very close friends and families will actually fly/drive up for 2 events that are relatively close to each other. Maybe you can have a Chinese-style banquet as the rehearsal dinner the night before? That way, both sides of the families can attend and experience both the eastern and western cultures and traditions. And in your western ceremony/banquet, you can even wear a traditional Chinese gown (chi pao) or have a tea ceremony, so that your fiance side of the family will still feel like they are ''part'' of the wedding.

Thanks for replying!

But...I really don''t think there''s any way we can do them the same weekend.

We''re going to be way out in the middle of nowhere for the ceremony, and there is zero chance that we could get remotely decent Chinese food up there. Aside from that, one of the reasons my fiance wanted to be sure we had a separate banquet was because he thought a number of his family members would be unable to go upstate for the weekend of the ceremony, so he wanted something here (in NYC) to be sure that all of them could come. That would be a good idea, though, I just wish something would be more feasible!!!

I am definitely going to get a cheongsam to wear for the banquet (& most likely for part of the ceremony/reception too) and I want to do a tea ceremony the day of the western ceremony, but we haven''t discussed that with his parents yet. He can''t really remember if that''s a tradition in his family (even though from what I''ve read I feel like it''s pretty widespread?), and he thought there was a chance that his parents might think I was just suggesting it because the parents are supposed to give you money and jewelry after you serve them tea.

Plus it''s just weird if the white girl is like "Ooh let''s have a tea ceremony! That''s Chinese!" if that isn''t actually something his family does...

 

[YumCarrots]

and he thought there was a chance that his parents might think I was just suggesting it because the parents are supposed to give you money and jewelry after you serve them tea.

Plus it''s just weird if the white girl is like ''Ooh let''s have a tea ceremony! That''s Chinese!'' if that isn''t actually something his family does...

hahaha, you''re cracking me up!

Well.. then yeah, you pretty much need to have them on different weekends. I''d definitely do the Chinese banquet after the ceremony. 2-3 weeks would be good. Good luck in planning! at least you have more than a year to plan...

 

[flopkins]

We are doing something similar. We decided to have the banquet about a month after, after the HM etc... the banquet will be mostly FI''s extended family (all CHinese) who could probably care less about the ceremony (seriously, I know a LOT of chinese ppl who skip the ceremony and just go to the banquet, and frankly most of them wouldn''t appreciate the American style reception we''re having) and really, all they care about is a big fat 10 course meal they can pig out on because they deserve a good meal after giving you a red envelope... so I wouldn''t worry so much about FI family being offended, I think for most Chinese the big deal is the banquet... of course you should invite the immediate and close fam to the ceremony also though, just to cover your a**.

 

[SoonIHope]

YumCarrots - you think after the ceremony is definitely better? That''s what I had been thinking for a long time, but then it suddenly occurred to me that before it might be better, like celebrating the impending marriage, instead of just tacking it on after the fact? But now both you and Flopkins seem to think after would be better? (hehe, I like your name too, by the way!)

flopkins - whew, that makes me feel so much better! We have just been IMing since I made him read what you two had to say, and are both much more comfortable with the 3 to 4 weeks later timeline now. Yay!

Thanks so much to both of you!!!!

And if anyone has any more thoughts, pleeease share!!

 

[flopkins]

albi- what does your FI''s parents say? in CHinese culture the groom pays for the wedding/banquet, I would think they would be all into the planning business and have opinions on how they would like things... bc it would be there ''reputation'' on the line, so to speak...

we tried to get away w/just the American style thing, and keeping it small, but then FI''s grandma got in the mix and there''s a LOT of family in SF that need to be invited to SOMETHING, so we added the chinese banquet to cover all the "important" people I''ve never met before, and FI hardly knows!

And, I know this sounds tacky, but the banquet will probably pay for itself w/ the red envelopes...

 

[SoonIHope]

Date: 1/6/2006 4:28:02 PM
Author: flopkins
albi- what does your FI''s parents say? in CHinese culture the groom pays for the wedding/banquet, I would think they would be all into the planning business and have opinions on how they would like things... bc it would be there ''reputation'' on the line, so to speak...

Hehe well we''ve barely been engaged a week, so not a lot of details worked out yet.

His parents aren''t super comfortable with English so they have all the "real" conversations in Cantonese, which I can''t understand, so we haven''t actually raised any of these issues with them yet. So I kind of want to get it all worked out between the two of us what WE want for the whole thing, so we can present it to them as Our Idea, instead of starting from scratch and negotiating the whole thing in a language I don''t speak.

My fiance is sure that they will care a lot about having a banquet, but they don''t have a whole lot of money and he''s been raised on those "we had to give up so much so that we could bring you to America" stories, so I''m pretty sure he''s going to insist that we pay for it ourselves, even if they do try offering. But then he''s still going to feel like it''s "their reputation on the line" and try to make it as nice as he can for them. Which is very nice, and is something that I love about him, but still, I don''t want tooooo high a percentage of our overall wedding costs to go to buying meat for his extended family.

(I''m a vegetarian who is just now coming to terms with having to do a traditional banquet...I was hoping to do vegetarian versions of all the traditional dishes from this reeally good vegetarian Chinese place in Flushing but my fiance reeeally doesn''t think we can get away with that.) Siiiigh.

But we both seem to be okay with now doing a more-vegetarian-than-usual-but-still-plenty-meaty banquet 3-4 weeks after the ceremony, which is more than I can say for like an hour ago!

 

[Dancing Fire]

albi
listen to "flopkins" she knows more about the old chinese culture

then anybody else.

flopkins is my ABC grandma from teh old country. LOL...

 

[flopkins]

hey now DF - I am NOT a grandmother of any kind!!!

you crack me up every time.....

I hope to be a grandma someday though... just not in... oh... maybe another 30 years... hehe!

 

[freckles127]

abli-

It looks like you have great advice from flopkins and DF already - here''s my .02: The tea ceremony is definitely a widespread thing, we have those at every wedding I''ve ever been to. As for restaurants, which ones have you been thinking about? I don''t know chinatown well but there are a few places in Flushing that are great for these banquets. Let me know if you want the short list.

Where''s that great vegetarian restaurant you were referring to?

 

[qtiekiki]

I don''t think people will think of it as an after thought if you kind of mention the situation to them. That''s what I did. We had a Vegas ceremony, tea ceremony and banquet in LA and 2nd banquet in the bay area. Although ours is slightly different than yours in that we didn''t have the same guests at both receptions/banquets. But I kind of let our plans out in the beginning of planning so they know what is going on and that we were going to have 2 banquets to begin with, so they don''t feel like we forgot them and just tacked on the 2nd one. We just had our parents talk to the family, distant relatives and their friends, which would be good for you since some of your FI''s family will probably speak only Cantonese.

Also like flopkins said, most older Chinese don''t really care about the ceremony anyways. Sad but true.

Something else that I wanted to mention is that when his family get involved and if they are somewhat traditional, then things can get out of your control. There were a lot of different of opinions and culture clash with what we wanted and what his parents wanted and we are both Chinese. You might not have the same problems, but just keep an open mind and prepare to compromise if things come up.