Those couple days of rain really... rained on our parade, for lack of a better cliche. Although we'd already been in China for ten days, we really didn't get to see a lot, having spent most of our time indoors in shopping malls or otherwise hiding from the rain - in fact, as you can tell from these blog posts, we were only really able to do any kind of traveling twice, and we actually spent quite a bit of time shopping even in Shanghai!
The day after we got back from Shanghai, people started arriving at the house. A lot of people. Most were neighbors pitching in to help set up tables and prepare dishes - in fact, one of the neighbors was the chef who would prepare over 20 dishes for about 200 wedding guests! Cherrie and I, not wanting to do nothing all day, actually pitched in to help as well, wiping off the floors and old furniture in the house that hadn't really been cleaned in probably several years. I suppose it was somewhat strange for the guests to see the bride and groom cleaning the house right before the 喜酒 (xi jiu, or happiness wine, typically associated with a ceremony of sorts). Cleaning the house, however, was quite a hopeless task - with all of the people walking in and out of the rain (Cherrie's house actually has an open-air courtyard in the middle of the house near the kitchen - helps keep the oil from the kitchen from getting out of hand indoors), the floors would get muddied mere seconds after wiping them down again.
My parents, grandparents, dad's younger sister, dad's older brother, Ed, and Melinda showed up at around 4:30 in the afternoon. My parents had arrived in China with Melinda the day before, while my brother and my aunt (小姑姑, or xiao gugu, meaning dad's younger sister) arrived earlier that morning. They came in and sat in Cherrie's room for a few minutes before heading to the hotel that we had booked for them the night before. In the evening, my parents, Ed, and Melinda came back to have dinner with us and many of the other wedding guests - a preview of what we would get the next day.I would stay with my parents at their hotel that night. Per Chinese tradition, the groom is supposed to pick up the bride, and thus, we couldn't well pick up the bride from her own house, so we used the hotel as the "groom's house". What would really get confusing was the actual day of the reception. The reception this time was intended to be an enactment of the Chinese wedding ceremony that Cherrie and I never had three years ago. Basically, as mentioned earlier, in the morning, the groom is supposed to pick up the bride and bring her back to the groom's house, symbolizing her official entry into the groom's family.
So, fairly early in the morning, my dad, Ed, Melinda, and I went to go get a bouquet of flowers in preparation of goint to 娶新娘(qu xin niang, or bring the bride). Shortly after Cherrie had her makeup done, we sent an envoy consisting of Ed, Melinda, and myself to Cherrie's house, where we picked Cherrie and Anna up and, with firecrackers going off around us brought them back to the hotel. There, we had a tea ceremony to honor my family and our elders (my grandparents) and received Red Packets (红包, or hong bao, basically red envelopes containing gift money).
At around 11, our fleet of six cars, all decorated with Double Happiness characters, arrived to take us to the site of the ceremony, which traditionally, is at the groom's house. However, in this case, the site was actually at the bride's house,A funny story about the fleet of six cars, as well. Basically, the number of cars picking up the bride has to be an even number. However, the rest of my family was also to ride along with the fleet, and obviously all nine of them couldn't fit in a second car following ours. However, we couldn't use four cars because the number four is symbolic for "death" in Chinese. Thus, we settled on six cars, which worked out well, since six represents "happiness" in Chinese. Yeah, Chinese numerology is pretty complicated!
We then proceeded to have the wedding lunch, which consisted, as mentioned before, of over 20 separate dishes and Cherrie and I greeting about 200 guests, starting with Cherrie's maternal uncles and working our way around to my family and Cherrie's granduncles and family friends, saluting them with drinks each time. I haven't really had any alcoholic drinks since I turned 21, and so I had to cheat a little bit, taking only very tiny little sips of my wine! I didn't even finish my second small glass! Immediately after lunch, many of the guests went home, and we sent Anna off with my uncle to head back to Shanghai as she was headed back to Poland the next day.
Immediately after sending Anna off, Ed, Melinda, Cherrie, and I rushed into downtown Wuxi to pick up our wedding photos, which we brought back to show to Cherrie's family and the remaining guests. We stayed for dinner, which consisted of the vast amounts of leftovers from the wedding lunch. However, Cherrie and I actually didn't get to eat much, as we spent much of the time battling the huge fleet of mosquitoes that picked today, of all days, to come to the house - previously, the weather had been cool enough to keep the mosquitoes away, but this night, they were out in full force! In addition, one of Cherrie's grade school friends, a young lady named Liu Ting, came to visit. Liu Ting was now an officer for the Public Security Bureau, or basically a police officer, but more interestingly, her post was to "encourage" people to move from their houses so they could demolish them and build new buildings! I always knew this kind of policy existed in China, but I never thought I would actually meet one of the enforcers of this policy, especially in a nice girl like Liu Ting!
Traditionally, having a wedding at the bride's house meant that the groom was officially entering the bride's family - which typically didn't happen unless the groom was of a lower social status than the bride. This tradition was also the reason we set up the hotel as the groom's house - because we would later return together to the hotel, once again symbolizing the bride's entry into the groom's family. Our room was the Deluxe Suite of the hotel, and we got the room for under a quarter of its sticker price, since Cherrie's brother knew one of the managers of the hotel. At least, presumably, this was one of the reasons for the low price. The room itself must have been very nice at one point in time, but now, much of it had deteriorated to a pretty poor state - the carpets had holes and were soggy in some spots, and there were even holes in some of the walls! Still we would only be here for one night, for the next day, Cherrie and I would head out on our official honeymoon, albeit with most of our respective families!Be sure to check out the photos from the Wedding Feast here: Wedding Feast Photos
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