Chinese Wedding-Wedding Reception Dinner

In every Chinese wedding, wedding dinner is as important as any occasion of the whole ceremony.

Traditionally, the dinner is held on the actual wedding day, bill and all footed by the groom’s family. Guests invited can either be every relative in the household, or even the whole village. Each invited guest will present gifts to the newly-weds, either as cash in ‘Ang Pao’ (red packets) or as jewelry. Standard number of dishes for a wedding banquet is 8 dishes; excluding dessert. Each dish signifies well-meaning wishes to the newly-weds.

Below are some of the flow in most of the Chinese wedding In Labuan.

1.Greeting

Greeting is the beginning of the banquet, where either the couple themselves or their parents (usually the groom’s) will be at the entrance to greet arriving guests. Guest usually will give their gift when greet by both bride & groom & their parents.

2.Reception

Reception signals the actual start of the dinner. Here in Labuan Reception is usually an hour later than the Greeting. Emcee will announce the start of the banquet. Parents from the both side will be the 1st to march in then only follow by the bride & groom. (Tradiotional Wedding song will be play during the march in, which i personally do not like it)

3.Speech

Speeches are usually done at the beginning of the banquet, in between the 1st and the 2nd dish.In Labuan, normally you seldom come across speeches from either bride or groom or even their parents.Basically, most of the newly wed do not know important of giving A WEDDING SPEECHES and tend to ignore it.Usually an emcee will lead at first and take over for the rest of the event. The emcee in Labuan should not know only how to talk but they need to be a good singer as well.

4.Toast

Around the 4th dish, the couple will cut the cake and proceed with the toast.This is when the Emcee will ask some questions to the bride & groom. Questions such as "please tell us how do you both meet each other"..bla bla bla After that, the couple will visit each table to "Yum Seng".

At the end of the dinner, the newly-weds will thank all the guests present, and will usually see the guests off at the entrance before finally leaving.(It depends, in most of the cases, groom will be not longer available at the entrance because he's already drunk..ha)