For English weddings, the bride and groom typically have a list of wedding gifts but for Chinese, we are more practical. All we want is money, partially to pay for the wedding costs and partially to pay your mother-in-law!
In Chinese culture, traditionally the man has to foot the bill for the whole wedding including the wedding dinner, which is different to English culture where traditionally the bride’s parents pays for the wedding dinner. The Chinese mother-in-law would request for 5 or more bride’s tables. So any wedding gifts (money) given from the bride’s tables would go to the bride’s mother. The rest of the wedding gifts from the groom’s tables would be given to the groom to foot the wedding dinner bill. During my sister’s wedding, my mum stood next to the wedding gift box and she would pocket any gifts from my mother’s relatives or friends.
So if you attend any Chinese weddings in Chinese restaurants as a friend or relative, they would expect you to come with a big fat red packet (ang bao) to help cover their dinner costs.
What to get for the wedded couple?
From a Relative/Friend:
Money! Do make sure it is enough to cover your own dinner costs. How to calculate how much to give? Check out the hotel rating beforehand. If it is a buffet, you can give less. If it’s in a posh hotel, then you should give more. Also give amounts in even numbers.
Chinese love the number 8. They would be happy to get 28, 38, 88 etc. but avoid the number four such as 40. Number four sounds like death in Chinese. So this is not an auspicious number. Also remember to write your name on the back of the red packet. The bride and groom will want to keep a record. So next time, if you get married, they will try to give you back the same amount of ang bao.
Avoid buying presents unless it is requested by the bride and groom. If you would still prefer to give a present, the best choice would be gold. It can be in any form like necklace, earrings etc.
From the Groom’s Family to Bride:
In Teochew traditions, they have to give four pieces of jewellery including a gold necklace, a pendant, a pair of earrings and a bangle.
Mr V kindly shared this photo below with us. This is the type of jewellery they gave to his wife 30 years ago.
In Cantonese traditions, bride will received a pair of dragon and phoenix gold bangles from mother-in-law. This is to symbolise a blissful union.
From the Bride’s Family to Bride:
Now that their daughter is going to be moving away from home, instead of money, they would give their daughter gold jewellery. The reason is simple – if the bride receives money, they would expect to share with their husband in their joint account. To protect their daughter, they give gold jewellery for their daughter to wear/keep. So this jewellery won’t be shared with the husband. Also the bride/wife should not tell the husband where she keeps it so that she has emergency funds if required.
So don’t feel offended if asked to give money (ang bao) at a Chinese wedding! What did you receive on your wedding?
Beautiful photos. What a wonderful wedding. The food looks delicious and love the wedding gift.!
Liking the sound of the Million Eyez – will check it out further!
That’s a great idea for an app and a great way to share photos
This is so cool to learn about! Thanks for the great post and for being part of the campaign.
That is so interesting, and actually I think that’s a wonderful idea giving jewelry instead of money so she has something for herself
these posts are so interesting! it’s great to get an insight into other cultures
You have to pay your Mother In Law? I have to say when we got married we asked for B&Q vouchers so we could do up our house
So interesting reading these thank you – I have to admit I know very little other than from the posts I have read from you on Chinese traditions 🙂
Thank you for such an interesting insight. I truly love reading these posts as I like learning new things to tell my mum about x
These posts are great. A bit of learning about other cultures is brilliant. I prefer to give money as a gift as I think, in the day and age where couples live together before getting married, money means they can treat themselves to what they like or what they need. We asked for money at our wedding so we had spending money for our honeymoon.
This is so interesting… I LOVE your posts because you tell us all the things that we just wouldn’t know about. I think the traditions are all so symbolic and something we lack quite a lot of in our English culture these days!
I love learning things from your posts. We got gift cards for our Wedding, not money but nearly x
It’s interesting to know, so that if I go to a chinese wedding now I won’t give the wrong thing! To be honest we mainly give money at weddings anyway – unless its an english wedding and they have the gift list, we will buy something, otherwise in all the asian weddings we just give cash in a card!
I like the idea of giving and receiving money. Most couples have been together a while by the time they have got married these days so probably don’t need much for the home. Money is much more practical!
money seems like an extremely practical gift… yes, maybe it is not very sexy but still… you cannot go wrong with giving money
It’s really interesting Eileen. I dislike giving money as a gift. I’d much rather choose and give a gift. I won’t if I get invited to a Chinese wedding though!
this is very interesting i would have no idea as the chinese seem offended by quite a few average gifts we buy each other over here if we gave them what we would like to rceive x
What a great post, so interesting to hear about other cultures xx
What a tradition of giving money to the couple so they can pay the inlaws. I am not so sure that would go over well here in the US. LOL… I know our kids would keep it all for themselves.
Great post – this is really interesting! Thanks for sharing 🙂
I love reading about different traditions – what a fab read!
In Greek Orthodox weddings, gifts are also given in the form of money, pinned to the bride and groom as they do the money dance. My dad is Greek Orthodox and I so wanted that at our wedding 😀 But it wasn’t to be!
Love your posts about all those different things between countries 😉 In Poland we normally ask for money to cover all the expenses coming with big fat wedding 😉
omg thats interesting, but way to complicated) do you still have to do it?! you mentioned english traditions but i guess in some families things are different, we paid for our wedding ourselves and parents merely tried to contribute by giving us which covered a bit of our wedding, as well as i know other couples who pay themselves for the wedding and parents just give them money as thier contributions towards it