Wedding Photos in Taiwan
I am NOT getting married. My 26th anniversary is in May.None the less, I find the Taiwanese bridal industry fascinating. It is sooooo very different from what you'd expect at home in North Carolina.
For the casual observer the first things you notice are the "wedding photos."
Obviously, the wedding photo above was not taken shortly after Rev. So-and-So said, "You may now kiss the bride."
Here, the wedding ceremony itself is quite secondary to the photos and the banquets. Many of the albums have more in common with a layout in Maxim or GQ magazines than wedding photos from a Western point of view.
Wedding photos are taken weeks before the ceremony and banquet. Sometimes over a series of of several weeks depending on the bride's family budget, the weather, and the couple's schedule. The object is to create a fantasy for the bride. She is a movie star, a top magazine model, a queen bee surrounded by make up technicians, lighting technicians, photographers, fashion consultants, drivers, and so on photographing her in the most elegant, romantic and exotic places.
She is adored and desired.
She is marrying Tom Cruise's twin brother.
Then, it is all put on display. A laminated album of poster sized photos are set on easels at the wedding and/or engagement banquets.
The scenarios or settings can range from the fantastical, to the slutty, to the simply mystifying (one photo posed the groom in a white and green tux standing in a swimming pool with water up to his waist while holding the bride halfway out of the water in her wedding gown.)
A walk up Zhong Shan North Road here, takes me by the most elegant and expensive of the bridal services. Young women in fancy clothes stand guard outside their respective boutiques showing off their photographers' works.
Portfolio albums are displayed on custom made pedestals on the sidewalks. Behind them, bridal gowns, ball gowns and the occasional additional poster of a photo fill the showroom windows. Inside, mothers and daughters hunch over catalogs and computer screens going over complex packages of offerings, deciding on the number of outfits, locations, size of the posters, budgets, etc.
typical bridal photo shops--I managed to get a lot of the album portfolio shots because many of the clerks were distracted by cleaning and making spirit money sacrifices to the gods that day and left the portfolio albums unattended. Notice the offerings to the gods on the little table in front of the shop.
In a more middle class part of town, the bridal row shops had set up benches along the sidewalk facing into the shops where bored grooms and fathers could sit and smoke while the women haggle out the deals. There is even an eight story tall building surrounded by a giant red steel ribbon--a business called DEAR WEDDING offering banquet facilities and photography studio services. Recent bride's photos were blown up to billboard size and mounted around the building. Ahem...er none of them was looking bridal or, uhm...innocent in the photos.
Recently, we had a break in the weather, a long string of cold rainy days was broken by one day of great weather. On my walk, I encountered a number of brides, taking the day off to complete some photo shoots for their wedding albums. Any open area of green space in this crowded city is fair game. For more expensive packages, everybody drives out to the central mountains or to the seashore, sometimes in a procession of vans carrying not only the bride, but the groom, technicians, props, and more than a half dozen different outfits.
This bride in a poofy miniskirt I encountered at the Sun Yat Sen historic site next to the Taipei Main Train Station. Yes, her wedding gown really is that short. A make up technician is talking with her.
You can't just get married any old time you want to. When couples announce their intentions (arranged marriages are long since a thing of the past) an astrologer is consulted to determine the "most auspicious" hour and day for the wedding. As there can be only a limited number of "most auspicious days" for a wedding--and nobody gets married in Ghost Month, late July into August on a lunar calendar--there is fierce competition to book wedding banquet catering facilities and the services of the best photographers.
The bulldog's a prop. The bride is waiting to get into a van full of dresses and technicians. Note her shoes and the towel she holds.
The bride's family will host an engagement banquet, generally smaller than the wedding banquet, and centered more on the bride's family and friends. The engagement banquet might be hosted only a week or a month apart from the wedding, regardless of when the wedding is so visitors coming from Canada, the USA, or elsewhere can attend both the engagement and wedding banquets. The groom hosts the wedding banquet. In either event, the first question asked is "how many tables?" A banquet's size is rated by the number of banquet tables seating 8 to 12 people. The food and drink for each guest is considerable and easily costs thousands of dollars (US) per table. In addition there will be a band, karaoke, speeches, gifts the new couple offer guests on leaving, and so on. It is a crushing economic undertaking.
So, they have the guests pay.
Upon arriving at the banquets, guests present "red envelopes," (cash is traditionally presented in red envelopes.) The amount of cash and the guest's name is recorded. One's relationship with the couple or the couple's parents, determines the amount of cash given or even expected. (It seems a great way to do money laundering and a system of tax avoidance.)
another bride off to a photo shoot on a day of nice weather
People who work in large offices complain of getting "red bombed." They might receive five invitations in one month to office weddings (maybe it's a big office and an auspicious time to get married.) They still have to send a little money if they do not attend and a lot more if they do. At one time, the red envelopes were to create a cash nest egg start for the couple. Now, they mostly offset the wedding expenses and, if there is any left over, help pay for the new Western innovation of a honeymoon.
Along a row of bridal shops in more middle class Da An, grooms and fathers wait outside the shops while the women make the decisions.
The working class get married, too. Here, a bridal shop in southern Taiwan in Kaohsiung. Note the tires stacked in front; the family owns the industrial uniform store next door, too.
Nominally, the wedding banquet is all about the couple. They are the center of attention and the whole is inevitably surmounted by a giant "double happiness" symbol, but really it is about the parents' status, collecting debts and payback.
The wedding album is put on display, and suffice it to say, there are very few Western fathers who would tolerate the public display of some (but not all) of the wedding photos I have seen in the portfolio albums.
Sample photo from a portfolio on Zhong Shan Rd. The same bride pictured at the top of this letter.
I don't know that I would want this sort of thing shown at my wedding. My father in-law would have gone off like a rocket (of course, we didn't have alcohol or dancing at our wedding either.)
The economic downturn has forced the wedding photographers to branch out into family and childhood photos. The couple above will shortly be in the market for the photo like this one in a bridal shop on Zhong Shan Rd.
Not all bridal photos are racy--most just cater to more innocent fantasy--see below
The bride will be expected to wear at least three outfits at the banquet (all rented as is her wedding gown and all provided by the wedding photographer) and may well wear a large amount of rented or borrowed jewelry. (An odd thing I notice here: normally women wear very little jewelry, and only now is the custom of even wearing a wedding band gaining ground, let alone an engagement ring.) Often, the bride will wear as one of her outfits, the more traditional chi pao the slender, bright red dress. Red is the traditional color for brides in Chinese society. I watched a bride being photographed in a gorgeous long red silk dress on the steps of the National Theater at Chiang Kai Shek Plaza a few days ago.
The legal wedding is simply a civil ceremony at a government office. People don't take that very seriously and you'll see folks show up for that in shorts and tee shirts. Everybody has to have a civil ceremony. it's not like in the States where the minister files the paperwork for the couple later.
The four percent or so of the island which is Christian, marry in a church.
For the rest of population, though there is great variation in local customs, the general outline of the marriage ceremony itself is as follows. Bright red "prayer cards" are hung on racks at the local temples, requesting happiness and prosperity for the young couple. On the auspicious hour at the auspicious time ( a bride would like to hope it's not 6AM but it's not unheard of) the groom shows up with his best man and or groomsmen at the bride's house. They kneel and make formal statements and requests to marry the daughter and take her away from her parents' house. Often, there has been some early morning ceremonies as the bride's mother and her bridesmaids get her ready and into a Western style bridal gown. The groom is to take her to his parents' house or to where the groom and the bride will live. (I am told that sometimes, for convenience, he simply takes her directly to the wedding banquet.)
If they are going to the groom's home, she will be preceded by the groomsmen throwing firecrackers along the way and at the entrance to scare away any evil demons. Auspicious wedding days can be noisy affairs all through town.
Despite the careful choice of auspicious days and driving away all the demons with firecrackers, Taiwan's divorce rate is rising as Confucian family values fade and economic and social pressures common to the West both liberate and oppress couples more.
To see photos of Taiwan weddings on my Flickr account click HERE
To see photos of Taiwan posted on my Flickr account click HERE
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