Wedding cigarettes and visa issues

I mentioned that we need to provide wedding cigarettes to all of the tables at our ceremony. My wife sent me pictures as I had never heard of or seen wedding cigarettes. They are regular cigarettes but the filter has a hollow centre shaped like a heart.

So now we have enough wedding cigarettes and wedding candy for everyone who will attend the ceremony. I will have 5 kgs of maple candy that I will bring with me. I guess we will need to package it up. Not sure if there is anything special to do with this area. I will learn more when I return to China.

I have been told I will need to wear new clothes, everything must be new. I now have to buy a new suit, shirt and tie, as well as shoes. This is not too bad as my wife needs 3 outfits. The wedding dress, which will be rented, a red outfit to wear when we thank the guests and a third outfit to wear after the ceremony.

I have received the visa package back from the government. It appears that we did not complete all of the necessary paperwork. So now I have to get the new forms, get them to China and make sure that my wife understands how to complete them.

All of the forms are in English or French and have to be completed in English or French. This does pose some problems as my wife cannot read either language.

The joys of dealing with government agencies and being a long distance away from the person who needs to fill in the forms.

Our wedding planning is moving forward and we may have found an apartment

My wife has been making progress in our wedding planning. She has found a hotel to hold the diner. She had to search around as there are many weddings taking place in October and hotel space is at a premium.

We also need to start buying wedding candy and wedding cigarettes. We will by our own beer and baijiu to save on some costs as hotels are expensive. I wasn’t aware of wedding cigarettes, but apparently we need to supply every table with cigarettes.

My wife is also helping to plan exactly what will take place during the wedding. I will have to give a short speech so she has sent me the speech to practice. My Mandarin is still not that good but I will give the speech anyway. I am told this will be greatly appreciated by the guests.

I was also told to by some wedding candy from Canada. This will be appreciated as well as we want our guests to recognize the joining of our two countries and cultures.

While she has been planning our wedding, she has also been searching for an apartment with her brother. Right now she is renting but she wants her own house. I agree and will let her decide on where we live.

While I am in Canada I am tying to get her a visitor’s visa. We are planning to return to Canada after our wedding for a short visit then she would go back to start decorating the apartment that we buy.

Getting a visitor’s visa is a lot more difficult than I thought it would be. There is a lot of paper work to submit and a visa is not guaranteed.

We will continue working towards a happy long-lasting life together.

Preparing for the wedding and buying a house

While I am back in Canada, my wife is getting the wedding ceremony preparations completed.

She has found a wedding planner and has looked at a couple of hotels to host the dinner and hold the ceremony.  There is a lot of work involved and she is pretty busy.

She also has to deal with friends who want to attend the dinner. We would like to keep the numbers manageable but at one point I think we had 300 people wanting to attend. I think we will probably try for around 100. These will all be her friends and family as my family will not be able to travel to China to be there.

In a way, my not being in China to help is a benefit. Being a westerner, and going to stores and dealing with some companies, you find that the prices go up. My wife can deal directly and not mention that I am from Canada, thus keeping prices normal. It will still cost a good deal of money to put on a good wedding ceremony. You are judged by the number of people attending as well as what you serve for both food and drink.

As well as planning our wedding ceremony, my wife and her brother are looking at apartments for us to buy.  When you get married in China, you are expected to move into a new house or apartment as well as furnish it. Getting married in China is not an inexpensive proposition.

Home again, but planning my future

Back home again for a couple of months. We are married and we have our wedding pictures. Now we start planning our Chinese wedding/reception ceremony and where we will live.

My wife has been talking to my mother-in-law who has been consulting with some friends who put a lot of credence into numbers and horoscopes. It looks like we are trying to have a September ceremony. While this may not be possible, we will try for October. The problem is that these are good months for having the ceremonies so we are competing with many other couples. Not just for hotels, but cars, flowers and wedding planners.

Wedding planning is another big business. Here the planner puts together the wedding from arranging the flowers and cars to printing pictures and signs, arranging the music and photographers, both still and video as well as the other aspects of the ceremony that the couple wants to include.

As I was at home and my wife was back in China, I really didn’t have too much input. I probably would have been more of a hindrance than help, as I would have been just as happy to just take the family and a few friends out to a restaurant for a nice quiet dinner.

On top of planning the ceremony, we were also looking at buying a condominium and then having to decorate it for our future together. Many stories still to tell.

Wedding pictures are ready

We got a telephone call saying that our wedding pictures were ready to be viewed and selected.

We went to the studio, my wife, the daughter and the nephew (my translator) and sat in front of a computer to see the 70 or 80 pictures that were taken. We had to decide on what pictures we wanted as we only paid for a small subset.

Now we will actually get all of the pictures on a CD, but the package we bought had 18 or 20 pictures in a large format book plus 2 large framed pictures and some smaller pictures on a placket backing.

This is a good business. They take 70 or 80 pictures and show them all to you, and then you have to choose the ones you want from all of the pictures. A nice up-sell to a larger package is available. Then you have to select the binding for the large format book. Another up-sell.

We finally did choose the pictures we wanted and we would get them in about 2 weeks. I won’t be here when they arrive, so I will not get to see them until my next visit.

I return to Canada for a couple of months and plan the next visit, which will be the wedding reception, formal Chinese type celebration of our marriage.

Wedding day

Not as hung-over as I thought I would be after my birthday celebration last night. Still, a bit of a headache, moving slow and not really willing to eat a big breakfast.

We went to the civil bureau for our wedding confirmation.

Strictly a civil affair. We went up to the office, waited in the waiting area for our number to be called, and when called went in to talk to the official.

We both signed and sealed the necessary papers for the wedding to be legal. We then posed for pictures taken by another official in front of the city seal and behind a podium. We read and signed another document about the sanctity of marriage.

While waiting for the photos to be printed and put into the folders along with our wedding licenses, I gave my wife her wedding ring.

This was probably not what I would have planned for a wedding but it appears that this is normal in China. No big formal ceremony now, just everything by the book and a civil ceremony.

Still we were now legally married, after I paid some more fees for the pictures etc.

I told my wife later that we actually were married on my parent’s anniversary. I did not tell her earlier as I did not want to influence any decisions of hers.

Now a brand new phase of my life begins.

Birthday celebrations continue

We continued drinking, eating, singing and dancing for my birthday.

It was fun, but I knew I would pay for it the next morning as I was drinking at least 3 glasses of beer to most people’s one glass.

I want to comment on candles on the cake.

They don’t put the number of candles for each year. There is a central large candle/device placed in the middle of the cake. When it is lit, it flares to about 1 foot high and as the flare dies down, small birthday candles that have been lit by the flare descend from the centre upright position to a horizontal position. As this happens, the device plays Happy Birthday. Yes they do sing Happy Birthday in Chinese.

Around 9:00 p.m. we decided to leave the Karaoke bar. I thought we were headed home. No chance. We headed to another Karaoke bar. This was a bit more modern, we didn’t have any food served, just chips, popcorn and more beer.

We only stayed for about an hour and by this time I was beat.

Luckily we went back to the apartment after this and went to sleep.

Tomorrow is my wedding day. I should be in great shape tomorrow.