Hope you’ve enjoyed my Chinese Wedding series so far where I have covered gifts, tea ceremony, hair combing ceremony and Yue Lao. This week, I am writing about ‘small uncle’ or in English tradition this is called a Page Boy. In a Chinese Wedding, our ‘small uncle’ have a very important role than just walk together with the bride.
Who can be Small Uncle?
Each bride and groom will have one boy each that is closely related to the family. For my sister’s wedding, they decided to ask my son to be their page boy.
Their first task of the wedding day:
On the wedding day, when the groom arrives at the bride’s house, he is not allowed to open his car door but has to wait for the small uncle to open it for him. The small uncle opens the door and brings a pair of oranges to welcome the groom. In return, the groom would give him ang pow (red packet).
This photo shown 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 too young at the time, he needed Mr C to give him a helping hand!
After fetching the bride*, they make way to their new home. When they arrive, they have to wait for the groom’s small uncle to open the car door for the bride and groom.
* the groom must pass the Chinese Bridal Door Game which I will cover soon.
Second task of the wedding day:
As part of Chinese custom, the groom and a few healthy men will build the bridal bed which later will be decorated with the traditional dragon and phoenix bed set. The small uncle is invited to roll on the bridal bed to denote fertility and bless the married couple to have a son. Chinese always favours having a son as they will carry 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 others. My son was quite confused when we asked him to do it! You might think what my daughter is doing there too. Unfortunately she wanted to be with her brother and didn’t want to miss a thing. So my mother allowed her to be on the bridal bed too.
This tradition is not always practised especially for those who don’t want to have children like my cousin. He didn’t have this tradition as he didn’t want any children after marriage.
As for my sister, now she is blessed with twin boys so I do wonder if it helped to have two children to roll on the bridal bed to have twins!
再见 (Zài Jiàn) for now and I will write more Chinese Wedding traditions soon.
