Chinese Wedding Page Boy / Small Uncle

Hope you have enjoyed my Chinese wedding series so far, where I have covered gifts, the tea ceremony, the hair combing ceremony, and Yue Lao. This week, I’m writing about the “small uncle” — known in English tradition as the page boy.

In a Chinese wedding, the “small uncle” has a much more important role than simply walking alongside the bride.

Who can be the Small Uncle?

Each bride and groom will usually have a young boy who is closely related to the family. For my sister’s wedding, they chose my son to be their page boy.

Their first task on the wedding day

On the wedding day, when the groom arrives at the bride’s house, he is not allowed to open the car door himself. Instead, he must wait for the small uncle to open it for him. The small uncle opens the door and presents the groom with a pair of oranges as a welcome gesture. In return, the groom gives him an ang pow (red packet).

This photo shows the bride’s small uncle opening the door for the groom.

This photo shows my son opening the door for my brother-in-law. As my son was very young at the time, he needed Mr C to give him a helping hand!

After fetching the bride*, they make their way to their new home. When they arrive, they must wait for the groom’s small uncle to open the car door for both the bride and groom.

*The groom must first pass the Chinese bridal door games, which I will cover in a future post.

Second task of the wedding day

As part of Chinese custom, the groom and several healthy men will assemble the bridal bed, which is later decorated with the traditional dragon and phoenix bedding set. The small uncle is then invited to roll on the bridal bed to symbolise fertility and bless the married couple with children — traditionally, a son, as sons were believed to carry on the family name.

In this photo, my son was asked to roll on the bed and place his hand into the potty to grab the ang pow, red dates, and other symbolic items. He looked rather confused when we asked him to do it!

You may also wonder why my daughter was there too. Unfortunately, she wanted to stay with her brother and didn’t want to miss out on anything, so my mother allowed her to join him on the bridal bed.

This tradition is not always practised, especially by couples who do not want children. For example, my cousin chose to skip this tradition because he and his wife did not plan to have children after marriage.

As for my sister, she is now blessed with twin boys, so I do wonder whether having two children rolling on the bridal bed helped bring twins!

再见 (Zài Jiàn) for now, and I’ll be writing more about Chinese wedding traditions soon.