Fetch The Bride

Chinese weddings are quite fun, IF YOU ARE INVOLVED in it, not just as the groom & bride. I'm serious. Let me tell you my account on a recent wedding that I personally attended.

About 2 months ago (YES, yes ... I know that this posting is waaaaaay long overdue), one of my good friends (let her be known as X) got married.

Prior to her wedding, Miss X emailed a couple of us (ONE YEAR AHEAD), her female friends, that she was getting married about this time next year & requested our help on that day. Of course, I RSVP (is that the correct term to use?) that I would gladly help her out on her BIG DAY (don't ask when it is my turn).

By 7am on her wedding day, X was beautifully made up by her stylist (time it took: one hour) & was sitting there in all glory & prettiness, waiting for her darling hubby to come fetch her. Let us call the groom Y.

I don't know how the custom started but when a Chinese lady gets married, she gets some of her lady friends as "sisters", to help out on that day. Part of our duties involved being the timekeeper (to ensure that we do not miss the lucky timings for certain events), helping to carry the bride's stuff (make-up, wedding dress bag, blah blah ...)

My favourite "game" has got to be this: FETCH THE BRIDE.

I know I digressed a little but nevermind. In the high spirit of things ... it can get out of hand a wee bit.

On the groom's side, he will get a few of his buddies to be his "brothers" & their duties would involve carry a tray of things that I'm not too sure of the significance, except that I know those are the things that you would see in Chinese weddings. (for good luck, I suppose) & accompany the guy as he goes "get his wife".

Now, when the groom comes, the gate/door to the home of his bride is supposed to be locked up, to prevent the guy's party to enter. What is supposed to happen next, is that Y & his buddies have to play a few games with the wife's friends.

Here's the fun part: those games can be quite a hoot to play, as they are not your normal "scissors, paper, stone". They are usually something like: eat certain things & hand over the red packet with money inside.

The significance of the games I gather (besides the usual good luck to the bridal couple) is to let the guy know that he can't just have the bride "so easily" & must treat his wife well.

The norm would be to let him, Y, have a taste of life ahead. That is why the games are usually split into 4 categories of "Suan" (Sour), "Tian" (Sweet), "Ku" (Bitter) & "La" (Spicy).

We, on the girl's side, managed to get 3 out of the 4, leaving out the "Tian" ... on hindsight, we ought to have considered asking her husband, Y, to eat some sugar but all things turned out well that morning. For the SUAN, we got some fresh limes, we had some bittergourd cut up for the KU bit & some small chilli padi as the LA. All these were kindly brought to us by one of the sisters that morning.


How much time we get to play these hilarious games depends on 2 factors:

1) the lucky time that we all (bride, groom & all the sisters & brothers) have to step into the groom's home. We had one of the sisters be the all-important timekeeper. Thanks for the wonderful job, J.

2) what time the groom & his buddies actually arrive to "fetch the bride"


When the guy arrives in a car at the girl's house, the girl's actual younger brother (related by blood & DNA; if the girl does not have any brothers, I suppose that her younger cousin also can?) will open the car door for the guy.

Immediately, the brother has to speed up back into the house before it is locked up prior to the groom's arrival, for the start of the "Fetch The Bride" showtime.

He arrived without much fanfare. As soon as we the girls spotted Y, we screamed out "HE IS HERE!! He's here!!!!" He came with four of his buddies to the entrance of X's home. THAT heralded the start of THE GAMES.

After some hemming & hawing, we started teasing the guy, saying something like (all mostly lucky-sounding phrases), "Oy, why did you come so late?", "You made her wait & worry", "You have committed the crime (fiticious, of course) of ..."

They handed over the first red packet (or ang pow, as we call them locally). A lot of giggling from the girls in the house, as we examined the red packet. It is difficult to describe on a blog how this actually looks like but ...

Then, we would tease him further by saying, "... as punishment, you have to do this ..." We got him & his buddies to EAT UP EVERYTHING, that we had planned whilst waiting for them to arrive.

More teasing:
"You are thirsty? Here, have some LIME to drink". They had to squeeze out the juice from the lime to drink, with the lime being smaller than a golf ball.

"You haven't known bitterness? Here, eat up this bittergourd" ... To his credit, the groom actually ate up most of the bittergourd himself (with him saying later on that he kind of like eating bittergourd, so it was no problem to him). Bravo!!

"You want to spice up your life? Here, eat some chillies!!" Now, that was something that his buddies are called "buddies", since they underwent eating the small chillies, which by the way, the smaller they are, the hotter they are. The groom, Y, did not eat any chillies.

Then, in the middle of it all, through a wily trick by the guys, one of the windows was accidentally unlocked. On seeing a window of opportunity (pardon the pun), the buddies rushed the groom to actually climb the window to get into the house. As we tried to push the guys (us 4 gals vs. the 4 blokes), there was lots of screaming "AAAahahhh!!" & "Cookie, go guard the door".

It is the FIRST TIME that I have actually seen the bridegroom climbing through the living room window to get into the house. I shall not forget that funny sight, ever.

We had agreed (us 4 ladies, excluding the lovely bride herself) that for Y to claim his wife, X, Y has to play 1 VIP game & hand over the ang pow with the "symbolically CORRECT" amount of money, before he could claim the bride. We put on our thinking caps to think of what games we could play, with who in charge of doing what. We had fun analyzing the games.

I had strict instructions not to open the door to the room where the bride sat waiting, until I counted that the amount for the BIG ang pow is correct. This was to be the last part of the games before Y could claim his wife, X, from us, her sisters.

So, leaving the other 3 sisters, I rushed into the room with the bride sitting there as cool as a cucumber & locked the door, using myself as the extra lock.

I sort of had the upper deciding hand & played it as such. (We, the sisters had agreed beforehand that the guy had to sing a song by David Tao, as suggested by me & the brothers had to play backup dancers to Y!!) Trying my darnest not to scream too much, I kept saying "I can't hear you!! You better sing louder or else I don't open the door!!"

After much bargaining & no backup dancers, the five guys sang David Tao's version of "The Moon Represents My Heart", with help from an MP3 player ... Go figure ...

Next, came the all-important handing of the ang pow. As in any Chinese wedding, the guys would try to reduce the amount of money, which started off initially at a very very high price. At last, after a lot of giggling & pretence, the money was handed over to the 3 ladies standing guard outside the door (while I was inside the room, behind the door).

As the ang pow was too thick (with all that money) to be slided under the door, the girls slipped the money slowly. I had to count (and never in all my life since my Maths exams, was I so nervous with money) & shout out something like "the money's OK".

Imagine wads of S$50 & S$10 notes to count: one S$50 note, two S$50 notes, three S$50 notes ... It got me counting twice, watched on by the very calm bride, who told me not to be so nervous.

With the amount being "correct", we sisters finally allowed the groom, Y, to see his very beautiful bride, X. That represented the "SWEETness", the ultimate in this very fun "game".

I could have poked further fun at Y but decided that in the goodness of the day, to be a good girl.