Wedding preparation adventures
Did I tell you that I got married? Haha! I’m just joking. I don’t want to be too annoying talking about the wedding in too many posts. To be honest, I didn’t even feel like sharing the pictures on Facebook, I don’t know why. But I wanted to write a bit about the things I had to prepare for the wedding. Which, luckily, weren’t many, as C. and the wedding planner took care of almost everything. However, some details required my opinion and sometimes even my presence… like the wedding dress!
Did you know that 80% of the world’s wedding dresses are made in Suzhou? (at least, according to the BBC). I thought finding one that I liked was going to be a walk in the park. I was wrong. It seems bridal styles are quite different in China and in the West, and all the gowns I could find in China were… too Chinese. This means they were too princessy, with puffy skirts, lots of bling bling and huge trains. So, basically, what I didn’t want. I first browsed on Taobao, selecting to display results from shops that were located in Suzhou. My logical mind thought that, if these shops were in Suzhou, they must have a physical store or at least a workshop where I could go and try the dresses on. Again, I was wrong. I found a few dresses that looked nice, but when asking if I could go to their place to try them on, the answer was no. I had to send them my measurements, they would tailor the dress and then send it to me. There was no way I was going to buy a wedding gown without seeing it on me first, so I had to change to plan B. Which was going to the bridal malls in Suzhou.
We went to two different malls, on two separate weekends. The first was the Tiger Hill Bridal Mall, which is a mastodon composed of 5 buildings. I only checked two and then gave up, as all the shops had similar things. Just eliminating the strapless (no thanks) dresses and the ones that had a train meant that I had very few options available… I did try some gowns on and some of them looked good (or at least I think they did), but, OMG, most of the dresses were SO HEAVY I could hardly move. I also tried a mermaid style one, which was way lighter, but I looked a bit fat in it and I would have needed to wear high heels, which was not going to happen. I chose the final dress from the second mall, a smaller one located in Xiangcheng district and which name I cannot remember. This dress is still way more princessy that I would have liked, but at least it was not strapless, it didn’t have a train and it didn’t feel heavy. After wearing it for 3 hours it was heavy as hell, but that’s another story. Oh, it was also pretty cheap. At least 4 times cheaper than a discounted wedding dress in Spain. I guess the quality and the materials are not super good, but I don’t need to break the bank for a dress that I am going to wear once (actually, twice!).
I liked the lace-y corset-y part. However, during the trial I didn’t notice the back and the sides were transparent!
The red qipao which I wore for the banquet was easier. In fact, it was basically the first one I tried. I didn’t even need to have it tailor made as the size they had in the shop was fine. It’s not made of real silk, but as the dry cleaners completely destroyed the silk dress I had made to attend the wedding of a friend a few years back, I’m fine with it. This one is sturdier.
With the best man.
In the bridal malls there were some shoe stores, but I am very demanding with shoes and I cannot stand high heels. So I completely relied on Taobao and got a pair of rice-white leather shoes with a 3 cm heel for the wedding dress, and a pair of cream-coloured embroidered cloth shoes for the qipao. Both very cheap! (I’m starting to see a pattern here…).
Regarding the accessories, I also turned to my good friend Taobao. I found a vintage jewellery store from Hong Kong who sold many interesting things. I bought a necklace and a bracelet, but in the end I chose not to wear the necklace as I thought it was too much (it’s the necklace I posted on Instagram last weekend). I did wear the bracelet, a pair of long earrings with a pearl which were a present from my late grandma, and a diamond and white gold ring that my mum had made for me (C. didn’t really know that such thing as an engagement ring existed). I bought hair accessories in Taobao but the ones I ended up using were from the make-up artists. I bought a golden olive leaf tiara that looked very pretty on the screen, but when I received it… it was a total failure, with a horrible colour and terribly bad quality. And it hurts on my head!
It looked nice on Taobao… but it was not! What a fail!
The bracelet was a total win though, I love it!
The gift for the guests was also bought in Taobao. We also needed to give gifts to everybody in C.’s company (because that’s how they roll, everybody does it) so we had to prepare 800 sets. In China, wedding gifts are almost always a small box with some chocolates or candies inside. We chose a red wooden box with a cartoon couple on two sides and the character used in weddings (囍, double happiness) in the other two. Inside there were two Ferrero Rocher which were also bought in Taobao (but in the official Ferrero online store, don’t worry).
For the wedding invitations we followed the current Chinese style, which is doing e-invitations with music and several pages of pictures and text that can be easily shared on WeChat. People usually put their pre-wedding pictures here, but as we didn’t have pre-wedding pics taken we used normal pictures. I quite liked the final result! Curious? You can see it here! It might take a bit to load as the server is in China. Don’t try to RSVP though, that wedding already passed :D
The wedding dress, what nightmarish memories I still have from back then going from store to store with my wife and her parents. Thankfully my wife decided on a dress within a week, could not see another one of those stores anymore. In Finland even some women buy their dresses from China as they are so much cheaper (and in fact the quality is often more or less the same when buying at the right shop).
For our wedding in Finland we had similar boxes but made out of cardboard, I wonder what chocolate we put in back then!
Oh and Ferrero Rocher, another thing I don’t want to see anymore. As my wife and I have our little exporting business we also sold tons of Ferrero Rocher to Chinese customers, something like 35RMB for a box containing 16 of those sugar bombs (ate too many…)
So you followed the Chinese tradition of the groom going with the bride to buy the dress. Or is it also like that in Finland/Germany? In Spain, the groom is not supposed to see the dress until the moment the bride arrives to the ceremony, so the bride goes dress shopping with her friends.
We also followed the Chinese tradition, haha.
Why do you eat your own products? Sampling the batches to ensure quality? Hahaha!
I actually don’t know how it is in Germany/ Finland!
Guess we just kind of did the Chinese way.
Anyhow some products we do sample or we have just some leftovers…like the one time we had 16 packs of Rocher left and someone had to eat them… (couldnt sell them anymore due to the expiration date approaching within two months)
I do think that in germany you aren’t supposed to see the bride either – though american influence is quite strong so it might have come from them and not been a German tradition. Though I didn’t take future hubs wedding dress shopping – he haaaates shopping and gets cranky after 5 ‘mins – the idea of a whole day with him moaning in my ear while i try to chose a dress…the horror…I took a good friend instead and it was great :)
I looked up the tradition about not seeing the dress before the wedding. I didn’t find where it originated, but this is supposedly the story:
“During the time when arranged marriages were custom, the betrothed couple wasn’t allowed to see each other before the wedding at all. The wedding symbolized a business deal between two families (romantic, huh?), and a father would have been pleased for his daughter to marry a man from a rich, land-owning family. But he also feared that if the groom met the bride before the wedding and thought she wasn’t attractive, he’d call off the wedding, casting shame onto the bride and her family. Therefore, it became tradition that the bride and groom were only allowed to meet at the wedding ceremony so that the groom did not have the opportunity to change his mind. And that veil the bride wears? Its original purpose was also to keep the groom from finding out what the bride looked like until the last possible minute, when it was too late to back out of the transaction.”
The theme….you don’t like fuss!
Love the qipao and bracelet. Red is your colour for sure!
Will you have to cover your shoulders for the Spanish wedding as that’ll be another thing to find! If it’s a catholic wedding. I’m guessing a cream silk scarf as I see so many ladies here do for weddings.
Love the pre wedding pic! My Vietnamese friend when she invited me to her wedding I think did the same! :)
I definitely don’t like fuss, haha.
Oh, we won’t have a catholic wedding. I haven’t been to mass in decades and C. is not catholic (I think being baptised is a requirement to get married in the church). We will just have a small ceremony in the garden of the place where we are doing the celebration :)
Religion has crazy rules.
An outdoors wedding sounds way better than being stuck indoors :)
Oh, I’m with you on the strapless dresses — not for me, either. I had I hard time finding one I could move my arms in, one that I could dance in, one that wasn’t cutesy or lacy or slutty…
Yeah. I had to have mine custom-made, in the end. Cuz, you know, She-Hulk.
If I’d known how I wanted my dress, I would have tried designing and having it custom made. But I was worried the final result would not look as good on me as on paper!
congratulations! may you live happily ever after! your wedding dress is lovely!
Thank you! :)
Congratulations, you crazy kids! You sound just like me, as in, I can totally relate, no heels, no princess-y styles, want straps, etc, cheap, hahahhaa. I’m not a fussy person and I don’t have some fantasy of being married like that or married in general, but hey, if I did, it would be simple. By the way, the dress you chose looks great!
Thank you again hehe. Not fussy, yes, that is a very good definition! And don’t make me say what I think about strapless dresses xD
I didn’t know Suzhou was a center for wedding dresses, interesting.
Don’t be shy about posting, the photos look great! :D
I’m a bit bored myself from talking about the wedding haha.
If you ever need a wedding dress you know where to go ;)
Me encantó como te veías! lindos ambos vestidos! y sii no vale la pena que sea 100% seda si al final a pesar del precio no te aseguras que dure mucho… Wow no tenía idea que Suzhou era tan referente de los vestidos de novia! Oye que terrible esas tiendas de taobao que sólo te lo hacen y te lo mandan, nooonessss. Cómo las chinas pueden aceptar eso? por muy quieras ahorrar, noooo, hay que probarlo! hahaha
Saludos!
Sé que en occidente también hay chicas que lo encargan por internet (a tiendas chinas!). Lo entiendo porque los vestidos de novia son carísimos allí, pero comprarlo sin probarlo… me parece muy arriesgado, jajaja
Noooo yo soy de tu team y también necesitaría probarlo antes!!
Loving the dresses Marta! You look stunning :D I went to wedding dress street in suzhou and also took a whole day but in the end I wound up with three really inexpensive dresses – after wedding through all the bling there were a few jewels to be found! I did get one tailored and it went spectcularily wrong – was in the shop for measurements but they were totally off and had to get the whole thing redone in nanjing duh
Thanks a lot! I didn’t really manage to find any dress that I really loved, many looked good on the rack but then on me… omg, haha. At least dresses are cheap here! It would have seriously hurt my wallet if I had to buy it in Spain!
My dress was tailor made but I first tried a sample they had in the shop. After they made it it was fine, they only had to retouch a couple of small things and then it was ready to go.
Great post. So enjoyed reading this Marta. I love the dress I think you look stunning. Agree about the bracelet. It’s beautiful. So China…buying something that looks fabulous and when it arrives it’s cheap and nasty. Ha ha.
Thanks Sue!
The tiara thing looked fabulous in the picture but the price was suspiciously cheap, haha. So of course it was bad quality… it was too cheap to be true xD
How fabulous! And both dresses are stunning! I had to laugh about the shoes – both my heels and flats were bargains bought in Bombay that held their own at our wee wedding in Canada. And already are getting use back here in India! :-)
I plan on using those shoes too after the Spanish wedding passes xD
Smart lady!! :-)
Everything was lovely. Both dresses are just right. I love the bracelet. I’m glad you didn’t wear the tiara. It’s too Greek-goddess looking.Congratulations and many happy years together to the bride and groom.
Thank you! Ah, I was so disappointed about the tiara… luckily the make up artist had some things I could borrow instead!
What’s the name of the song used on your e-invitation?
(And what’s wrong with strapless dresses?)
The song is “Not going anywhere”, by Keren Ann.
I personally think strapless dresses look good on very, very few lucky people. But they are very popular and when I was looking at wedding dresses basically half of them were strapless.
Pingback: Chinese Wedding Traditions | Bunny and Panda