Ed Wang chose August 8 to propose to Tara Prigge, because in numerology, 8-8 represents prosperity and luck. Months later, invitations to their wedding in Washington, D.C., carried the “double happiness” symbol. But that was about as Chinese as the couple envisioned their nuptials to be.
The groom’s parents, originally from Taiwan, pushed hard for a Chinese banquet, but the couple wanted a more personal celebration reflecting their cross-cultural influences. Wang does not speak Chinese, and his direct experience with Asia occurred in Japan, where he worked for several months after law school. Prigge, who grew up in a small Midwestern town, has German American roots. Their reception was held at a Pan-Asian restaurant that serves edamame and naan. Bright red parasols and large paper lanterns adorned the venue. A silk Indian sari, purchased on eBay, served as an aisle runner.
While the couple’s families were happy about the occasion, Wang’s parents were put off by the Pan-Asian touches that were more about style than tradition. “We thought they would be pleased we chose an Asian restaurant for the reception, but having it at the wrong kind of place — modern, minimalist, not a dragon and phoenix to be found — almost made things worse,” Prigge wrote in an e-mail. Her in-laws didn’t invite their friends because they thought the setting was too casual.
However, a compromise was reached when the Wangs hosted a Chinese banquet during the rehearsal dinner. “It was a huge hit, which went a long way toward making Ed’s parents feel good about the wedding as a whole,” Prigge said.
Like Prigge and Wang, many interracial couples face the challenges of combining two or more sets of cultural traditions in their weddings. Alpa Patel, the founder of Affair to Remember, an event planning company with offices in Dallas and Houston, said that out of about 30 weddings she organizes each year, four or five involve mixed-race couples. “Most of the Indian brides and grooms I work with have been born and raised here,” she says in a soft Texan accent. She cites one memorable wedding that involved 400 guests and where the bride was Indian and the groom was half-Chinese and half-Irish. After a Hindu ceremony, the couple went to church for a Catholic wedding. The bride wore three different dresses throughout the day.
Rather than follow tried-and-true steps, many couples treat their wedding as the ultimate opportunity to be creative, cherry picking customs or altering them to suit their personalities, often at the risk of making a gaffe. When Sian Wu, a public relations consultant in Seattle, decided to cut the sleeves of her Chinese qipao, her tailor, an immigrant from Hong Kong, balked. “‘I can’t believe you’re doing that to your wedding dress!’” Wu recalls the tailor saying. “‘Only in America.’”
Wu wore a Western dress for her wedding, but she wanted the qipao for her reception. Luckily, her mother, who is originally from Shanghai, thought the sleeveless qipao looked fine. “My parents have always been liberal,” Wu says. She and her husband, Jack Lloyd, exchanged vows in a non-denominational ceremony at a Victorian house in Amherst, Mass. During the reception, their American friends were puzzled to see the bride had changed out of her white dress. The Chinese in turn grumbled about the food.
“The menu was Asian fusion,” Wu says. “Chinese banquets have at least 10 courses, and we had just three. People were like, ‘Is that it?’ At some point, we just stopped worrying about it.”
The critics were appeased by the wedding favors, small scrolls that included a Chinese poem about Putuo Shan, an island in the East China Sea where the couple fell in love. One side of the scroll was in Chinese, the other in English, translated by the groom.
A “culture clash wedding” is how Leilani Bacon, a make-up artist and freelance writer in Memphis, refers to her upcoming nuptials to Matthew Miller, a Korean American adoptee. In her funny and acerbic wedding blog (thenot.wordpress.com), Bacon, who is French-Creole, questions the relevance of various Korean and Cajun rituals. Although she wants to be egalitarian, she will submit to the piggyback ride in which the Korean groom literally demonstrates his ability to support the bride, she says no to other parts of the paebek, especially when the groom’s parents throw dates and chestnuts for the couple to catch, heralding the large family to come. Couples typically catch a half-dozen or more. “I don’t want a lapful of symbolic babies,” Bacon writes. Instead, she plans to offer dates as dessert.
Bacon is also hesitant about “jumping the broom,” a Southern tradition, and the “money dance,” originally from Eastern Europe, where guests pin money to the bride and groom in exchange for a dance. “I think it’s hella tacky, and I’m not about to let anyone come at my dress (or me) with pointy objects,” she writes. Talking by phone, however, she admits that her family would probably get their way on this one.
Negotiating traditions is inherent to the Asian American experience, so why should your wedding day be any different? Even when both bride and groom are from the same culture, a departure from the norm is often necessary. Wenhong Lee and his wife, Limei, exchanged atypical vows in a waterfront park near Seattle. “We had a simple ceremony because none of our families could make it to the U.S.,” says Lee, a project manager from Shanghai.
While the families were missed, their absence gave the couple the freedom to do as they wished. The bride, originally from Shenzhen, wore a pretty white dress, but it was not a puffy, fussy wedding gown. A female judge officiated the event. Afterward, everyone ate their fill at a Chinese restaurant, proving that some rituals are worth keeping intact.
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