I have been to four Taiwanese weddings and the most remarkable thing about these experiences is how precisely the same the weddings were. The only individuality evident in these weddings was the individuals themselves. Otherwise, I could have been at any one of the four ceremonies I have attended. This past Saturday I attended the wedding of one of Jia Hui's best friends, for whom Jia Hui was one of the two bridesmaids.

The audience of approximately 400 guests was seated at their dinner tables and amid raucously loud pop music, first the flower girl and groom's boy, followed by the two bridesmaids arm-in-arm with the two bestmen, walked down the restaurant aisle to the bottom of a stage at the front. There they awaited the bride, dressed in a white wedding gown, and groom who, moments later, followed the same route together. All this time a man on the stage with a microphone was loudly engaging in a losing battle with the blaring pop music and the applause of the audience. The bride and groom were seated at a dinner table at the front of the restaurant at which their parents were waiting and the bridesmaids (Jia Hui and her other best friend, Angel) joined Jian Hua (Angel's boyfriend) and I at our table at the back of the restaurant. Then an army of waiters served the first two courses of the evening's traditional twelve-course meal.

Following the starter courses the bride , with limited assistance from the bridesmaids changed out of the white wedding gown into a different evening gown and returned with the groom. The bride and groom, with their parents, mounted the stage and after many more speeches were pronounced, I presume, husband and wife. The legal papers will only be signed a few days later, but the gathered public bore witness that they were now married. They left the stage and then with the groom's parents made the rounds of all the tables to thank the guests and for all to toast the newly married couple. While this was happening at each table, the rest of the tables continued working their way through the remaining ten courses of the meal, to the accompaniment of an assorted collection and talents of karaoke singers from the gathered audience who took a break from eating to try to put the rest of us off our food.

Following this round of thanks and toasts, by which time the bride and groom had consumed vast quantities of toasting alcohol, the bride again changed into a more relaxed dress and she and her husband made their way to the exit where they stood with trays of candy to offer departing guests who gradually made their way out and to have their picture taken with guests again and again and again ... The whole affair, from the white gown to the last picture, lasted three hours.

What made this wedding really memorable for me was the beautiful bridesmaid sitting next to me.

22 July 2003

Dion Marc Delport

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