A Cop’s Wedding

Yang got a call a few weeks back. The ex girlfriend of one of her best friends was getting married and we were invited. On the day of the wedding we awoke early, got dressed in something besides shorts and drove to the west side of Beijing. It was hot and humid and Lydia and Aidan were in the backseat; reusing the outfits they wore for Donnie’s wedding.

The bride, Becky, had met a young police officer, a detective. We learned later that his biggest case was breaking up a gang of Alto driving thugs. In case you’ve never seen an Alto, it can be kindly referred to as a subcompact. Seats two, with an engine so small rumors are that it comes with auxiliary pedals.

This may have been my first full on Chinese wedding, I am not sure, and I will describe it trying not to over-generalize or make too many comparisons to American weddings. But of course I will do this anyway.

The first striking thing was the bride and groom arrived together, in a BMW 7 series sedan. People gather around the car with exploding confetti in hand. The groom first emerged and then lifted the wife out of the car, carrying her in his arms, as you would taking your new wife home for the first time. The confetti exploded, pictures were taken, and the not yet married couple came inside.

The wedding was at a hotel, in a large banquet hall. The back of the hall had floor to ceiling posters … maybe 20 feet tall, 7 feet wide…of the happy couple; six posters in all. I noticed the groom looked a lot like another man, only younger. Everyone took their seats at assigned tables, we sat with a family of four. Instead of a priest or rabbi a MC opened the ceremony and loosened everyone up. The groom appeared on stage in his police uniform, the bride appearing shortly afterwards. I remember what seemed like a vow exchange. Aidan and Lydia then appeared from the right of the altar stage with the rings and the audience noticeably gasped. At least that’s how it felt to me. Aidan and Lydia did their job to perfection, too cute to be my kids but not Yang’s, and then headed off the stage. Once the ceremony part of the wedding was over food started to arrive or at least people started to eat the food that was arriving during the ceremony. Then people talked on stage; family members, the matchmaker, the bride and groom. We ate. Aidan and Lydia ate and played. At one point Lydia disappeared. We later found she had gone back with the bride to her dressing room and was discussing what type of wedding dress she wanted when she got married. And getting the bride water and food in Lydia’s hopeful way.

The bride and groom walked around and greeted every table…maybe 20 of them..and this being a Chinese wedding it came as no surprise that their was a baijiu toast at each table. By the time they got to our table they were quite smashed. A happy red faced smashed. It was maybe one in the afternoon. Having to drive back and hating baijui I toasted them with a coke.

We gathered up flowers, posed for a picture with the new family, and left.