On May 17th, 2014, me and Yoyo had our wedding. We just wanted to do sth simple, but then the next thing you know there's 80 people on the invitee list, tons of "wedding stuff" that needing taking care of. However, by Chinese standards, we still kept things on the simple side and opted to forgo most of the expected/traditional parts of a Chinese wedding ceremony, save for one. Yoyo's mom couldn't accept an evening wedding, 'cause in northern China, weddings in the evening are for 2nd marriages. Our wedding ceremony officially had to be 100% concluded by 12:58 pm.
Despite a late start, the wedding went off pretty damn smooth. i made my entrance on an old Beijing bike, amazed that people could be so amazed by a gimmick like that.
The host and translator were a Dutch couple, friends of me and Yoyo. The Chinese audience seemed particularly surprised to see the tall foreigner talking perfect Chinese, and his Chinese wife translating him into perfect English.
Yoyo mad her appearance to the Grimes track "Symphonia IX," a bit unconventional, but when i heard Grimes play that track at a show last year, it struck me as the song that Yoyo should use to walk down the a
I made a brief speech which began, "I hope it's ok if i use this time to talk a bit about politics," and hope that by the speech's end a few people were misty-eyed. Then there was a surprise dance performance by me and two mutual friends of the song Yoyo. It's a disco track and as soon as i found it months ago, i knew it had to be performed at the wedding.
Me and Yoyo did a bit of swing dance, as we've been taking some classes. And yes i'm a pretty shitty lead, but that way you can score points for being unpretentious. The last performance was a traditional Beijing "bianlian" guy who whips through a series of masks, and i still have no idea how it's done. That was for the older folks, though apparently it surprised the younger gang too.
vAnyhow, the speeches were all short and sweet and funny, Yoyo was crying, i was a bit teary myself, and the performances were all pretty fun. We wanted to throw a fun party, and did. According to one Chinese friend, we "broke all the rules." Whatever that means. People seemed to really dig the whole thing. My mom (possibly biased, who knows) said it was the funnest wedding she'd ever been to, so that's great. Happy to please.
After the ceremony for the banquet, some tables were a bit raucous, while others were rather stilted, but what can you do. i mean hey, i can't force people to get drunk and chitchat with strangers.
Also, we screened this vid at some point in time.
