Old, New, Borrowed, Blue

I'm a superstitious person. You wouldn't know it to look at me, but I totally am. I play volleyball with a #7 jersey whenever I got the chance. I do not ever set TV volumes or air-conditioning temperatures to a prime number higher than 11. If I can't set it to a multiple of 4 or 5, then a multiple of 9 will do. When coaching volleyball, I have my own weird set of rituals that take place before a game - mainly the order in which I list the players' names on the score sheet. I hate it when Blake says idiotic things like "there's no such thing as a j--x".

Thing is, apart from that last one, I don't tend to adhere to what you'd call "traditional" superstitions. Black cats, ladders, and broken mirrors don't fuss me in a luck sort of way (just an allergy, accident-prone, and who the fuck left all this glass lying around sort of way). Chinese superstitions don't bother me very much, either - I don't pay homage to the number 8 (unless the #7 or #77 jerseys aren't available), the number 4 doesn't bug me much, and I don't prevent red from being in certain areas of the house. Instead, I make my own luck.

(That I picture Rachel Dawson saying "you make your own luck" to Harvey Dent shortly before she goes to her death in the Dark Knight is probably not a great sign.)

It stands to reason that the "something old/new/borrowed/blue" rhyme didn't mean much to me, either. In fact, I actually asked a bunch of brides what the significance of it was and their answer was basically "it's meant to be lucky". Now, maybe the media portrays brides unfairly, but I have some distinct reality-TV recollections of brides flipping their shit when one of those 4 items was missing. I'd actually thought it was a cultural thing. But, as it turns out, much like wearing white to the wedding, it's something completely optional that only a few brides spend a lot of time worrying about.

I know most ladies don't obsess about this, and maybe most of you couldn't have been fussed one way or the other! Much like I was. Until recently.

Without really meaning to, signs began popping up. A couple of weeks ago, Blake gave me an (blue) opal ring to wear as a placeholder, "practice" ring, which I've been wearing every day since I got it. My wedding jewelry includes a bracelet I've owned for ten years exactly - a gift from my dad when I turned 21.

In true nerd fashion, I kicked into research gear. What did these things really mean? Could something be both borrowed and old or did it have to be 2 separate things? What about my new, blue ring?

As it turns out, the rhyme originated from English folklore and actually goes:

“Something old,
something new,
something borrowed,
something blue,
and a silver sixpence in her shoe.”

These days the sixpence is usually dropped, presumably because that sounds horrendously uncomfortable. And rather than just being a cutesy rhyme, each item does apparently have meaning. Most of them have to do with warding off the "Evil Eye" which apparently renders women barren, which in them olden-time days was a Big Deal because it apparently meant you weren't worth marrying or something. How delightfully unevolved. For example, the "something borrowed" is usually a pair of underwear that belongs to a woman who has had lots of kids and has proven to be very fertile, which is meant to help you with your own fertility.

Uh, gross.

I certainly don't intend to complete the set, necessarily, but it seems like I might do it by accident. Eh, I'm not going to complain about having some "accidental" luck on the day. But rather than worrying about whether or not my opal ring counts as a 2-for-1, I'm more likely to be hoping to high heaven that the temperature on the Big Day will be 25, 28, or 30 degrees and none of the shitty numbers in between. (27 is okay but only at a stretch.) That's not insane or ridiculous, right?

Choosing a Theme

Though I've managed thus far to not buy, pick up, open, or even glance at a bridal magazine since getting engaged, I have of course been all over the internet. Pinterest, once a confusing and overwhelming place full of pictures of stuff, suddenly made sense to me as a human being. In my internet investigations, I came across words that leap out repeatedly on blog posts, articles, advice pages, and photo captions. "Vintage". "Romantic". "Glam". "Hollywood". "Beach". "Bohemian". "Retro". "Garden". To name a few.

I know what those words mean, but not what their implications are in the planning of a wedding. In wedding-world, these words aren't just styles or locations; they're themes, meant to unite the various elements of your wedding so that it's all consistent and makes sense. And I guess I found the concept confusing because I was really struggling to nail down a "theme" for our wedding. Many of the decisions made thus far were based on cost/price, with no theme in mind.

It's only recently that I've begun wondering - does the style of my dress match the style of the this and the that that will also be in the wedding?  I'm generally a person who likes things to match, who thinks in themes and patterns; what if the rapid decision-making in the early stages of the wedding planning means that I end up something that looks like an amateurish mess?

The Batgirl-Nightwing themed wedding that was all over social media a while back was, in two words, fucking incredible. The nerd in me was deeply awed by how perfectly everything seemed to fit together (including the couple themselves), and also deeply envious that they had a very clear, shared interest that was big enough to roll into a wedding theme.

I'm not implying that Batgirl-Nightwing were in any way a mono-faceted couple at all. I'm sure they also had myriad interests and they chose this particular interest as a theme because it was what brought them together. That's awesome.

So I've been trying to identify any single, thematic thing that defines our relationship, or that is even a cornerstone of our relationship. Anything important enough to both of us that could be highlighted and on display at the wedding. I'm weirdly proud to say that I came up short.

Blake and I are what you may call Jacks-of-all-trades. We pride ourselves in being impossible to stereotype. Our joint interests are scattered: we are sporty but super geeky. Into boardgames but also into the outdoors. We love Pixar and Die Hard. We also have passions that we don't share but that also make each of us a person the other loves.

The theme of our wedding will basically just be us and shit we like. Our wedding wouldn't be considered "thematically consistent" by any bridal, fashion, or pop culture magazine in the universe, and that's fine. Despite what they may claim otherwise, there is no actual rule around how a wedding MUST or MUST NOT be styled. Sure, I can see how it all might drive our photographer a bit nuts, but everything will be thematically consistent to us, because it all represents the things - and people - we love.

Parties Involving Bacholerettes and/or Hens

This post might rub a few people the wrong way, but look, this is really just my personal opinion. It's not a commentary on how I think things should or shouldn't be, it's just a write-up on the way I see it. Please don't hate me!

The concept of the bachelorette party (aka the hens do) is a wholly alien one to me. I have been to many and have had heaps of fun, don't get me wrong, and I definitely appreciate being invited and getting the chance to be a part of it! But the fact that they are a thing remains personally befuddling.

Historically, my friendship groups have been predominantly male. That's not to say I didn't have friendships with girls or aren't close to girls, it's just that for the most part, I hung out with way more guys than girls. Generally speaking, in a big group of people, I tended to gravitate towards talking to the guys. This isn't because the girls were bad or mean or anything like that. In fact, if you know me at all, the reason seems obvious: the majority of my interests tend towards those "traditionally" viewed to be held by guys.

More accurately, both my sister and I were raised in an androgynous way. We explored interests because we found them interesting, and we seldom noticed (or cared) what genders explored them alongside us.

The example I love to give is that we had far more Hot Wheels cars than Barbie dolls, and frequently tried to find ways to attach the Hot Wheels cars to our Barbies' feet as roller skates. We loved Lego even before the Paradisa set came out, and we begged and begged for Nerf guns from a young age (we got Super Soakers instead, which I think is my mum's way of making she never had vacuum up the odd Nerf dart). We just didn't see gendered stuff when it came to what we liked. Neither my sister nor I wore or had any interest in makeup until our late 20s; it's not that we thought makeup was bad or that it was too girly for us (and there's nothing wrong with being girly, either!). It's more that we just weren't interested in it; it wasn't on my radar and I'd spend my money on magic tricks and video games rather than foundation or eyeliner!

But as we got older and the gender divide seemed to broaden right around the puberty mark, we did begin to notice that we were making friends far more readily and quickly with boys than with girls.

I don't know if it's my age group or the local culture, but since moving to Perth I've found that you're kind of "expected" to get along better with people your own gender. I find this bizarre and perhaps worthy of its own sort of exploration. I don't have a problem with it necessarily; it's just been far more noticeable in Perth than it ever was in the US or anywhere else I've lived. Whatever the cause, it does mean that the gender split across my friendship groups is a bit more even these days than it ever has been.

As you can predict, the idea of a bachelorette party to celebrate my last days as an unwed woman with an all-girl cast creates a weird cognitive disconnect for me. Like, I get that it's a bit of fun with your mates before you enter married life. On that level it sounds awesome, because it's sort of true that the dynamics in a given group change as people start getting married. But I don't know why it's been defined as an all-girls (or all-guys) thing.

An all-girls hens party would exclude some of my best mates, which gives me the sense that this is one of those wedding things that just isn't for me. It's great and excellent if it's something anyone else wants to do, and I am 100% supportive of those for whom it is important! No complaints. I just won't be having one of them for myself, is all.

That's not to say I'm against a pre-wedding bash at all. As a guest, I do totally get the idea of meeting other people who will be at the wedding before the day itself; that sounds like a cool plan. I reckon a Nerf war or laser gun fight sounds pretty freakin' fun, but I might scrap the idea all together given that we have very little time left in which to plan a bash at all.

The Chinese Red Packet

There are lots of places on the internet where you can read about this staple of traditional Chinese culture, but why go to those far more scholarly and well-informed places when you can come here? It is a very visible aspect of my culture and is generally associated with Chinese New Year, but it's also present across a range of important occasions including weddings, births, and graduations.

What I'm referring to here is the red envelope or red packet, which is called a variety of names in Chinese as well. The one I'll be using in this post is hongbao (紅包), which is Mandarin for, literally, "red bag". Another common name for it is lai see (利是), which is Cantonese. In Australia, it's common to hear it referred to as angpow, which is the Hokkien dialect pronunciation of hongbao.

Essentially, a hongbao represents good luck and prosperity and is bright red in colour for this reason. By giving someone a hongbao, you are wishing them well and the contents of the envelope are meant to be a measure of the sincerity of those well wishes.

The rules around who gives and who receives vary from region to region across any Chinese population in the world, but it's chiefly governed by seniority, in that the more senior give to the less senior. What typically defines seniority is age, relationship, and marital status. The older you are and the closer the relationship (i.e., parents or grandparents rather than friends or colleagues), the more you are expected to give. Married couples are traditionally considered to be of a "higher status" than unwed singles.

Seniority also sometimes determines what goes into a hongbao. Traditionally, they hold cash money (sometimes jewelry in the case of weddings), the amount of which is determined by a number of factors: occasion, relationship/seniority to the recipient, and venue. There are lots of unwritten rules around this sort of thing, which becomes even more tricky when you consider that each subgroup has different rules.

As an example, Singaporean culture has a laundry list of rules (SURPRISING NO ONE) surrounding the giving of wedding hongbao - or angpow, as they are locally called. Every financial year, angpow rates are released by wedding dinner venues all over the city. These are literally price lists of how much it would be appropriate to give the bride and groom in your angpow based on where the wedding dinner is being held - that is, how much it likely cost the bride/groom to host you. That amount is the "base" amount".

Then, from that base amount, the amount you give is calculated from there. If you're a very close friend or relative, you might give 150% of the base amount. Most guests will give just the base amount itself because it's polite. You give a bit less than the base amount if it's a weekday dinner or a lunch, but otherwise you wouldn't give less unless there's bad blood between you and the bride's/groom's families but have been invited out of obligation.

That's just Singapore. In mainland China, it's another set of highly variant and context-driven rules. If you've got people from work attending your wedding, your boss is expected to give you more in his/her hongbao than your other colleagues are. The more senior the boss, the more they are supposed to give.

Regardless of the subgroup, one thing is consistent across all of them: woe befall he/she who gives too little. Saving face and losing face are cornerstones across all Chinese cultures, and giving too little at a wedding could mean that you go from the inner circle to black sheep in the blink of an eye. It's a scary balancing act, too - if you give waaaaay more than expected, you're more likely to be deemed presumptuous of the relationship you have to the newlyweds rather than simply generous.

So, rather than the gift registries or Wishing Wells that are typical of Western weddings, the hongbao is the gift-giving aspect of a Chinese wedding. For family, hongbao are usually given during the Tea Ceremony rather than during the wedding, while everyone else gives it on being greeted by the bride and groom during the wedding. Suffice it to say, I'm so glad we're having a cross-cultural wedding, because it does mean we pretty much get to decide how we want to honour our respective cultures. Similar to how we're working the Tea Ceremony, we're pretty intent to do it our way.

We don't expect gifts, but we'll be combining our Wishing Well and the hongbao tradition in a pretty fun way. Guests who do want to give money to the Wishing Well will be able to do so, while others who aren't will also be able participate with no loss of face. I don't know that I can say much more than that without giving the surprise away. 

Either way, if you are going to be joining us on the Big Day and are thinking of contributing to the Wishing Well, please don't worry about any fancy maths or obsess about the amount. The most important thing is that you're there celebrating with us!

A Magical Place Called Taobao

Growing up, my English was pretty terrible; I was actually in an English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) class up until the age of 9 or 10 in Hong Kong. My parents made me watch Sesame Street on TV at home to improve my English.

As we began moving around every few years to a new city and country, I got more use out of the English side of things. In many aspects it's an achievement of which I am proud, not least because I know I well outpace many native speakers in vocabulary and the rules of grammar. But sometimes, dependent on context, it's also a deep-seated and secret shame, because it came at great cost to my Chinese.

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SIDEBAR: I would totally just watch a bunch of Cantonese cartoons until I heard the elevator clanging up and the lock turning, then quickly switch to Sesame Street and act like I'd been watching it all along. I'm pretty sure my parents knew.

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When we lived in the Philippines, we had a Mandarin tutor come around once a week. I hated it, but my parents made me stick with it. When we moved to Beijing after 5 years in the Philippines, well, let me put it this way: I still haven't apologised to my mum and dad. I went on to use Mandarin regularly in Beijing and years later in Shanghai when I started working.

Then, I moved to Perth. Needless to say, I have not used much Chinese - Cantonese or Mandarin - at all except in very specific situations. It's a weird feeling, knowing that an important skill that makes me a huge part of who I am is slipping away, bit by bit. It got to the point where I became flustered when trying to read Chinese, because I was starting to see words I have known in the past, but can't seem to pronounce anymore.

Now that's a lot of context to set up what is really just an amusing anecdote. I have been trying to find a variety of items for the wedding and was looking on eBay and Etsy for cheap but quality items. I'd found a few that matched most of my criteria, but nothing that ticked all the boxes. A few days after beginning this search, it hit me: I was thinking too small. I was constraining myself to English search engines.

There's this place - I don't know if you've guessed what it's called yet - known as "Taobao" (rhymes with "bow" as in "lowering your upper torso"). It is essentially China's version of eBay and Amazon all smashed together, and it connects you with the same suppliers that sell all the stuff you buy everywhere else that's Made in China. And let me put it this way: there is so much stuff on Taobao. You can find almost anything for any price, including, as I recently found out, virtual girlfriends.

In one specific example, I found an item listed for about AUD1.50 on eBay. I found the exact same item (same photos, same zoom-in photos, same specs, same city of origin) on Taobao for AUD0.50 each!

The downside, of course, is that you have to be able to read Chinese. The former of which, much to my delight, has been coming back to me over the past few days. I did struggle at first, but then you get used to seeing the text and something about being immersed in it just brings everything else out, too. It's almost like warming up before a workout. I started out reading a word here and there to get the gist to suddenly realising that I'd been reading everything on the page for the past hour and hadn't even noticed!

Something interesting I've noticed is that the product reviews on Taobao are hilarious. Chinese reviewers will never, ever give something "5 stars" or say it's "perfect" or "awesome" unless it really, genuinely is. More often than not, the good stuff gets reviewed as "satisfactory", "not bad", and "adequate". It's all done with as much brevity as possible, too - rarely will you find any review longer than two sentences of text, even if the product is horrible in quality. Plus, they write like they talk, and then I hear it in my brain, and then I smile a bit.

So, basically, being Chinese is pretty awesome. Not only am I going to get stuff for the wedding sourced at a fraction of the cost from English-only websites, I also get to flex my atrophied Chinese muscles. I get to feel at least a little bit in touch with where I came from, even if it's the most superficial way possible. And, on an emotional note, I really cannot express how valuable that feeling is through this whole process.

A Minor Musical Conundrum

In the few minutes before I head off to bed on a Monday evening, a problem arises.

Blake and I have vastly different tastes in music. This is an issue almost never - really, it's ONLY an issue when he's trapped in the car while I'm driving and Carly Rae Jepsen comes on the radio. Because I will refuse to let him change it.

To be honest, I have never understood how some people get very annoyed at a song they dislike - it's just a song, it'll be over in less than 5 minutes, calm down.

But now I might get an inkling of what that's like, because our differing tastes are coming face-to-face in the construction of our wedding "must-play" list.

I've agreed to let Blake handle the music, and I'm pretty happy for him to do so given that he seems to have much stronger opinions on what good music is or isn't than I do. I contributed a list of my own must-plays, which I have been slowly paring down (currently at 10 songs).

The thing is, right now, Blake's list has lots of songs that are nice to listen to, but most are really hard to actually dance to. There are also a couple of songs that I don't think actually suit a wedding (i.e., inappropriate messages within the songs) and in my opinion this means they can easily be excluded from a "must-play" list. Which now makes ME the picky one.

I'm sure we'll have this all sorted before the wedding itself, of course, it's just that right now I feel an odd sense of role reversal and I'm having a hard time expressing my concerns about the music without feeling like a huuuuuuge hypocrite. Then again, I'm pretty sleepy right now, so who knows.

That Ring Thing

This is the ring Blake used to propose:

Cute, hey. I loved the idea, as did my family. If he hadn't won them over already, he certainly did with this move.

My grandmother is in her late 80s and, bless her heart, her age has been showing in recent years. For as long as I can remember, our clan's matriarch is infamous for a near-pathological obsession with being "proper" and "polite".  When Blake came to Singapore for Christmas in December 2012, my grandmother, in very her-like way, she apologised repeatedly to him for her "very poor English".

(This was the second time he'd met my grandmother; the first time was in September 2009 in Beijing.)

Let me make this perfectly clear: my grandmother speaks grammatically perfect English. She has pulled each of her grandchildren up on grammar errors at some stage or another, including those of us who speak it with native fluency. Her vocabulary and syntax are better than those of ACTUAL native speakers. And it's not her first language, either.

Anyway, she's basically apologising to be polite. It's a saving face thing that prevails in Chinese culture.

My mother recently showed my grandmother the above photo of the ring. Her response? To remark on how gorgeous the ring was, and how there were so many huge diamonds on the ring, and how extravagant it was!

I'm 99% sure this was a combination of failing eyesight as well as the aforementioned exceeding politeness. Either way, Blake finds this story hilarious.

The Tea Ceremony

Lots of folks have been asking me about the Chinese Tea Ceremony and its significance, and I've been totally happy to answer any and all questions thus associated. I briefly considered adding a link to some website about this tradition when I had a thought: no two families do this quite the same way. As cultural groups are not internally homogenous, neither is the observation of their traditions. So here's a little blog-style post about how we'll be doing it.

The tea ceremony is a component of a Chinese wedding, but is wholly separate to the actual wedding ceremony itself. That is, the wedding is about uniting the bride and groom, where their relationship and formation of a new family takes centre stage. The tea ceremony is instead about each of their own families.

Traditionally, the ceremony is meant to cover two main things:

1. To honour and show respect to each of the families, particularly those more "senior" to the bride or groom; and
2. To welcome each of the newlyweds into the other's family as a daughter or son, acknowledging the change in the status of their relationships.

I put "senior" in quotes because seniority is a big deal in Chinese culture; certain individuals are to be offered respect first and foremost, dictated by their relationship to you, their age, and their gender. That we are having our ceremony in Singapore is a non-traditional way to acknowledge my grandmother's seniority, being the lone surviving grandparent between our families. That Blake's older sister is part of the ceremony while my younger sister is not is another example of how seniority works.

Depending on what kind of Chinese you are, there are plenty of variations between venues and service order, with the one constant being that, well, yes, there is tea involved. The newlyweds are to pour and serve tea to their families, starting with one side of the family (in order of seniority) and then across to the other side of the family. Which family goes first is a matter of cultural variation; some families serve the bride's family first to signify her departure from her family, while others serve the groom's family first because the groom's family traditionally pays for the wedding.

(Hence the impasse in which we found ourselves, where Blake's culture dictates that the bride's family pays for everything.)

The bride's "departure from her family" bit is to do with old-school Chinese culture, where the wedding ceremony usually starts with the groom coming to the bride's house and "taking" her away to get married. In stark comparison, in most Western weddings the bride is "given away" by her father. Both traditions totally stem from perverse patriarchal origins, but I'm finding that I have to balance smashing the patriarchy with not pissing off my parents or future in-laws.

We've decided to serve my family first and Blake's family second, as a deference to my grandmother's seniority and also the fact that I currently live in Perth.

Another variation is when the tea ceremony occurs. In our family (and the vast majority of Cantonese families, from what I understand), the tea ceremony traditionally takes place after the wedding, usually within a couple of days of the wedding itself; the newlyweds will pay a visit to one family's house and then the other family's house, to pour and serve tea separately. There are some Chinese cultural groups who do the tea ceremony before the wedding (usually the morning of), and some who do it during the wedding, usually just after the couple has been married.

We've decided to do the tea ceremony a week before our Perth (and legal) wedding, serving tea to both families one after the other on the same day at the same place. This hits a lot of notes for me, not least because it is important to me that Blake's family knows and acknowledges where I come from, at least in part. Often I feel that the ease of my adjustment to living to Perth is (unintentionally) taken for granted; I would like them to see my grandmother's house - one of the last remaining bastions of my upbringing that still holds meaning for me over my nomadic life.

That's not how most folks would do things, but eh, we're not most folks. As my parents like to tell me, some traditions are significant and meaningful, some of them are outdated and kind of dumb or done only for tradition's sake. The good news is that we get to choose which traditions fall into which category, because the creation of any new family means there's a new cultural variant on the board, which is kind of really super awesome.