Traditional Chinese cultural tea ceremonies at weddings are great on their own, but what if they could be even better? We love a good Qipao and black dragon tea, but it can be a little too much, especially if everyone has already attended a few weddings recently! So change it up a bit and get creative. If you don’t know where to start, here are our top recommendations to spice up your Chinese cultures in your wedding based on our Vancouver photo shoot and our wedding!
1. Change up the Qipao
No need to be in a drama to live your best day! 古装剧 opened the wedding world to plenty of other outfits on top of the traditional Qipao. Come on, it’s 2021! If you want to wear something else and it won’t be a big deal with your family, try other options.
Choosing to wear HanFu or other Chinese traditional outfits not only honours the culture and ritual but can also add some fun to the morning.
In our case, we chose
different outfits that fit the aesthetic we were going for. No need to go to specialty shops: we got ours from Taobao, XianYu (Where you can purchase second-hand cosplayer items) and some brick-and-mortar local boutiques.
Want to replicate the look? Our chosen outfit is called 大袖, and we got it from Taobao. Just search 十三余 国风工作室, you are welcome. The great thing about this specific dress is that it came with several elements and accessories that made it easy to customize. Of course, you can always find something similar from cheaper stores, but do you really want to sacrifice quality? Texture makes a lot of difference, so make sure it doesn’t look ‘cheap’.
We also got matching outfits for the rest of the bridal party. This is great if you want to take group photos! We went with black, but we know this can be a bit controversial. Use your judgement before picking culturally-sensitive colours! In our case, it all worked out after putting effort into every little detail, including hats for the boys. Don’t you love the end result?
2. Serve bubble tea to older siblings
Let’s be honest. Our inner Asian comes out whenever there’s boba tea included. After photographing another Chinese wedding where the bride served bubble tea, we knew we had to do it too. This is one of the easiest ways of changing up your Chinese cultural wedding: just swap the tea!
Of course, we still served traditional Chinese tea for the parents. But everyone else got delicious brown sugar milk tea with pearls from Xing Fu Tang. And what a fitting name! XingFuTang means a house of happiness, so it served as a blessing. The parents loved the meaning behind the name, and the younger crowd got to enjoy their bbt: two birds in one stone!
We loved the pics from the tea ceremony. The tears and emotions all came at the same time, and everyone enjoyed their drinks so much!
3. Personalized bridal gifts
We wanted to make everyone’s day a bit more special, so we got them some wedding gifts. And what’s best than Asian snacks? Nothing, really.
Asian snacks are unbeatable, and given they make up a huge part of Miya’s our diet, of course there had to be some. We chose some snacks and dim sum we know everyone would like, but you can customize this to fit your taste.
In our case, the bridal party and door game team got different pocky sticks flavours and mini alcohol shot bottles, with flavours matching their personalities. We had a lot of fun showing them how every flavour matched the owner. It was a great way to say thank you for being a part of our special day. Plus, snacks also made group photos extra tasty. Yum!
You can find snacks at pretty much any Asian grocery store, or even get them in bulk from Amazon. Great for bigger groups!
4. Use Custom Fans
Yep, actual fans like in these photos. Fans are a lightweight, easy prop that can be customized with names, fun phrases or anything else! Plus, they can also serve as wedding favours if you have a summer wedding.
For our pics, we ordered them custom from Taobao, and you can easily find shops that will charge you less than $10 each. Depending on your taste, they can be classy, or not. In our case, we’re goofy and fun-loving by nature, so we put a spin on the words and used funny phrases that also match the personality of each owner. After an hour of non-stop wedding pictures, these were a great way to make everyone smile!
As props, fans are also a great accessory. They take care of awkward hand gestures and add a touch of class to your Chinese wedding photo session. And they are definitely a must-have if you’re having a summer wedding.
5. Have a Chinese prewedding photo session
Who said you had to have everything done on the same day? Weddings are stressful, and with all the prep work it can get messy very fast.
You want great photos, but you also need to tend to the family. You’d love to wear a cool outfit, but the schedule doesn’t make it possible… we get it. In fact, we ended up wearing not one, not two, but three sets of Chinese ceremony outfits on top of 10+ other outfits, but that’s for another blog post!
The best thing about a prewedding photo session is that you can really get everything you ever wanted, without the stress of the actual wedding day. You can schedule the session before or after the wedding, and can even get amazing group photos if you invite your friends. It’s fun to dress up and get your pics taken, and it’s a great excuse to get together again.
We did ours actually a week after our Vancouver wedding. Then, we brought all the outfits, accessories and props that we DID NOT get to use on the day.
Miya got every little detail ready, including matching Chinese traditional shoes, Chinese silk patterned handbags, Chinese wooden combs to symbolize long lasting happiness … everything that wouldn’t fit in our original wedding. And we got to incorporate tons of Chinese elements we love (HOT POT) but just weren’t feasible at a wedding.
All the pics shown here were from our prewedding Chinese photo session at Xiao Long Kan Hotpot restaurant. Then when everything was ready, we started the self-portraits! This was a great way to finish off our tripod self-portrait prewedding project that took us around the world (See here for our tripod project) and 2 full years of wedding planning!
P.S. Having an authentic Chinese venue would also help elevate the elements. We had our pre wedding photos done at Xiaolongkan
