Last week, I attended Yen Nee’s wedding dinner at a local hotel. All Papillon was invited and we occupied two full tables.
I am not sure if other guests are glad that we attended – the bride and groom certainly seemed to enjoy our ‘entertainment’.
This is not the first Chinese wedding I have attended, but it was very much different from all the others. I never knew how much fun one can have with two eggs and two grapes. But I am getting ahead of myself.
For the entrance of the bride and groom, we had a series of ‘explosive’ confetti cannons – unfortunately, for you and me, I do not have any pictures – but the floor of the hotel ballroom looked quite different after our salvo (8 separate confetti shooters along the aisle). Throughout the dinner, we had many cheers for the new couple. Here is the full group of us
One big happy family. At the end of the dinner, it is customary for the bride and groom to go from table to table to greet guests. We were the last tables to be so honoured and we had a few surprises in store.
First the bride has to take two eggs, introduce them at the bottom of each pant leg of the groom and has to make them travel all the way to be extracted from his collar . Here is what is looks like:
At first it is rather easy…
but you have to be careful
The eggs did not break and so we were ready for the second exercise: the groom has to eat two grapes hanging from the neck of the bride
blindfolded, of course, and the grapes are kept moving …
We had an excellent time – I just fear that we may not be invited again to another celebration. It is clear that the hotel will ask for a supplement if we are involved again!
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Gee, Pierre, it seems like you’re becoming increasingly more Chinese as time goes on. You’re getting variants of traditions that I haven’t seen before!
The egg and the grapes are new to me. The grapes would seem to be a variation of the chicken head and rear hung on strings. Just writing that makes me think that it’s probably a refined tradition to be using fruit rather than fowl in wedding festivities.