Wedding To-Dos

Well, wedding planning in China is not actually as involved as it can be in the States...after all, people tend to do the same thing...find a hotel, hire a wedding company, get some photos and clothes, show up and party with your guests.

For us, it's been a bit more complicated, because we hate the way wedding companies typically do things in China...so we have been seeking to do our own style Chinese-American, Christian wedding (also not that common here).

First, we wanted to find a place that wasn't the typical hideous banquet room with pillars idiotically placed throughout the room so that views of the proceedings are BLOCKED (I swear, 99% of rooms we looked at were like that).

It turns out, after desperately praying on the way home from yet another frustrating outing trying to secure a place, we stopped on a whim at a resort building shaped like a Mongolian yurt. I was skeptical, because, first of all, we aren't Mongolian, and the outside looked a bit cheesy. To our shock, the inside of the room was unique and very well designed. The sales rep told us it had been designed after a theater. Not too big, not too small..ideal really. AND right outside the door? The park with a great place to do the outdoor wedding vows part we had imagined. They had done it before too (outdoor weddings are almost unheard of here in Hohhot due to unpredictable weather and lack of suitable venues).
It's a tad bit expensive, but we are in the process of bargaining down (and whoring ourselves out as a Chinese-American international wedding that will bring their resort good publicity). Whew, huge relief.

Next up?

1) Arranging the details of the wedding...performers, who will do our vows, how to honor God through our proceedings and meld some Chinese traditions I love with American ones I treasure.

2) Wedding clothes. At Chinese weddings, the bride usually wears TWO dresses nowadays....a white one to greet guests (white Western-style), and a red one (Chinese tradition) to toast with guests in. So yes, I must find TWO perfect dresses....considering I will be wearing each for short periods of time, I don't want to pay much...but unfortunately many of the options here remind me of bad 80s prom dresses. Or Little Bo Peep.

3)Take the pre-wedding portraits. This usually entails dressing in really strange clothing, posing in really cheesy ways, and getting photos printed with random Chinglish or Korean characters on them. We did book some portraits, but asked to do most of ours outside, and without all the cheesy details. It should be interesting...they also gave us a slight discount because they had never photographed a foreigner/Chinese couple.

4) Figure out if we can afford a honeymoon at the time we have vacation this summer, and where is a place my husband can easily get a visa to (as an American, I can travel to most places easily...he, as a Chinese citizen, doesn't have the same luxury...so annoying).

5) Arrange things for all our foreigner guests! (that will be the fun part of planning)

All that to say, any ideas and suggestions welcome!