Our Friends' Wedding

Our friends Mei Sin and John got married on March 8th.  It was a wonderful wedding!  Lots of planning went into it and our community group was right in the middle of the planning and executing it all.  It was interesting to talk with Mei Sin about her planning and such since my own wedding wasn't all that long ago.  There is no registry here - only money is given to the bride and groom.  Generally you give about what your portion of the cost of the wedding dinner would be.  (you'll see why later!).  Mei Sin had three dresses, one for the wedding and two for the dinner.  She and John had to go and register their marriage in a civil government office before the church wedding.  This took place about a week before the actual wedding and she wore one of the dresses to that!  

The theme colors were red and white.  Because the guests would have to wait a bit between the afternoon wedding and the dinner (which would probably start late), they decided they wanted to give the guests something to nibble on while waiting.  So they asked our friend Hannah and I to bake cupcakes to set out on the tables.  We decided to do red velvet cupcakes with white butter cream frosting and little red hearts.  It was an all day affair.  First Hannah brought over her oven:  

Yup, that's Roy carrying the oven into the house.  We had to bake 300 cupcakes so we knew we'd need extra baking help.  We had quite an assembly line going with two stand mixers, two ovens, and six of us mixing dry and wet ingredients, frosting and decorating.  It was a lot of fun and the cupcakes turned out really pretty...



Chinese weddings are all about the dinner.  The service was lovely and the groom played the violin as his bride walked down the isle, but the main event was in the dining room later!  The dinner is a 9 course affair.  I forgot to take a photo of the first course which was four hot and cold appetizers.  But here are the rest...

Shark's Fin Soup

Crispy Roasted Chicken with Black Pepper Sauce

Steamed Red Snapper with Ginger and Garlic

Baked Tiger Prawns with Salted Egg and Butter

Braised Clams with Assorted Mushrooms and Vegetables

Fried Rice in Lotus Leaves

Sweet Fancy Duets (the nearer ones are little buns and the far ones are a jelly like thing rolled in coconut)

and finally....Sweetened Sea Coconut with Oat and Milk

It was all delicious.  I really enjoyed the shark's fin soup and the coconut soup thing at the end.  At each table there are about 10 to 12 people and so you each get a small portion of each dish.  It makes it really nice.  Kind of like a tapas thing.   Between each course there were things going on up front - like friends singing a song, Mei Sin and John singing, a photo collage from friends in Europe, cutting the cake (which was fake!), toasting and also their first dance (Roy and I got invited up to dance with them).  

We were really honored to be a part of the wedding.  We served with others as ushers and I read scripture during the service.  

I love this photo of them!

Here's our community group toasting the bride and groom!

And here is a photo of our whole community group with the bride and groom!