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Our Big Fat Chinese Wedding

I know what you’re thinking. Wait a minute Mo, aren’t you having your wedding in a vineyard with Italian food? This blog post title says “big fat Chinese wedding”, what’s so Chinese about a vineyard and Italian food? Is your entire profile a sham?? Is your name even Mo??!

I can explain. Yours truly not only is having one wedding extravaganza, but TWO. That’s right, we’re having two celebrations, in two different cities, with two different guest lists, two different invitations, two different florists, two different outfits…I could keep going but you’re probably getting a headache.

It’s insane. I now refer to our events as wedding #1, what my parents refer to as “the western wedding”, and wedding #2—The Chinese Banquet. [If you’re unfamiliar or want to know more about Chinese banquets, Chinese Weddings by the Knot has a pretty good run-down of what a wedding banquet entails, plus a lot of other Chinese traditions! Also, The Wedding Banquet, directed by Ang Lee, kept me laughing and is very educational. I love that movie, two enthusiastic thumbs up.]

The good news (or is it good?) is that the banquet is being totally planned by my mother and my future mother-in-law. 300 of our parents’ friends and relatives (and when I say relatives, I mean second, third, and fourth cousins), will be dining on roast pork, shark fin soup, and walnut shrimp. You read right. THREE HUNDRED. This banquet is making both our parents very, very happy, so I’ve tried to get over all the hoopla and am instead focusing on my only task: finding something to wear.

All I have to do is show up in a cheongsam and have two other outfits to change into (it’s customary for the bride to change multiple times). My mother gave me the two dresses she wore to her wedding, and they are gorgeous. I would love to wear one of them, but they are too small (*cry). If I lose 10 pounds, I can fit into them. I doubt that will happen, but for a short moment, I was able to squeeze one of them on without ripping it (woohoo!):

cheongsam1

cheongsam3

cheongsam4

[I would loooove to wear this one, but it wouldn’t even fit over my thighs! These suckers are tight as $%^&. Because they don’t fit, we will probably have one made to my measurements.]

Is anyone else having a second reception or a big fat Chinese wedding? :)