I just went to a wedding this morning. A relative who I honestly not too closed to just got married. Here's a little confusion of our relationship. She's my aunt who's 5 years older than me and marring to a person 5 years older than me. Well, did I just tell you it's a little confusing. Anyways, I think numbers don't matter much. It's all about time and chemicals :)
Besides best thing going to any relative's wedding, family gathering,going to a wedding first time in many years, made me realize how weird and interesting our wedding culture is. There are quite a number of things I picked up just thinking randomly. Here to share all these fun fact and hope you find this interesting and knowledgable as well!
Gimme diamond you little sis...
Should I actually wait till my younger sister marry her bf before I do so..? #lol
So, this is a little funny. In fact, quite (very funny). Imagine you have 3 sisters including you. You're the youngest one and decide to get married before your 2 bigger sisters. Guess what, you gotta give them either a piece of diamond (yes, real diamond) or gold as fees! 😱
As the way it's suppose to be or what they think it's supposed to be is that, the older get married first. So if you skip the line and go in front of your older ones, you'd better pay them almost like an 'express pass' for amusement parks.
This is pretty much Chinese kinda culture. Also, another fact, you can't pay in fiat, crypto, or NFTs, only diamond or gold accepted! #lol
Pay to pass!
This is a super duper funny one! Before the celebration starts and before the groom comes in to see the bride. Now to explain easily, let me call it, a groom's team and a bride's team.
The groom team - he gotta stay far far away.. In this case, like half a km or something 🙃. He waits outside with all his family and friends. The team lead by the groom, followed by his closest family members like mommy and dad with lots of red envelope in their hands.
What's inside the red envelopes?
You asked.. and yup you guessed it, money!
The bride team - On the other side, the bride family members and friend pair up with another person and prepare their little gates. Lots of them! These are the gate keepers!
Bring the chains!!
Either a chain for their purse, actual gold chain from their necks or whatever kind of chain you can use as gate to stop the groom from walking straight away to the bride.
Once it's time, the groom team will start walking toward where we keep the bridge slowly, step by step. He gotta pass by each one of the chain gate. By doing so, he gotta not just do whatever the gate keeper ask him to do. The most common is something like, 'say I love the bride as loud as you can', 'Dance like there's no tomorrow', and many other creative ones you can come up with.
Besides doing all the funny stuff, you remember those red envelopes? Yup, after doing odds, acting all weird, he also gotta pay the gate keepers to take down the chain as well before him and his team can continue to the next ones...
Honestly, I think it's kinda fun!
Worship the spirits
I would imagine a lot of countries out there would just cook and share some good meals with the whole family. We Asian (Thai to be exact) are a little more generous. We're not sharing only the ones alive, but also the spirits around! Some of you already laughing a little loud at this point but it's kinda true. We worship spirits and whatever around us that we can't really see they're actually there.
The things we use to worship are a little different from the humans' version. Imagine a raw giant pig leg! Mmmm.. Yum!
