Alex’s wedding ceremony was on Sunday, and was an interesting experience. It was an outdoor ceremony and the weather decided to open up half way through, though thankfully it was only short. I don’t think it was an entirely Chinese in the way it worked, but still authentic in alot of respects. As I gather, there was some issues, but on the whole I felt it was ok. The MC wasn't very good in Miao's eyes and the man controlling the music during the ceremony wasn't exactly perfect either. Before the ceremony he kept testing the mic saying "oui" (pronounced way) for the best part of 15 minutes. The flower arrangements were awkwardly placed, meaning that me and some others couldn't see Alex's face.

We went back into the hotel for the reception and on each table there were some beers, soft drinks, a plate of 15 cigarretes, baijiu (traditional Chinese spirt at 50%) and some dishes for eating. They hadn't provided shot glases for the spirits, so they were asked for and came. Over the course of the reception more dishes arrived including fish, chicken, "sea cucumber" a local delicacy, sweetcorn, sugar glazed potato cubes and others. We were all given a little box of presents including a 20 pack of cigarettes (which we gave to others) and some sweets.

The couple went round drinking (in this case some expensive baijiu) with the guests and giving them / lighting their cigarettes. There were some speeches from the bride's father and Alex's mother, translated into Chinese by a local manager of a relocation and business consultancy. The English speaking element was few, so the Father's speech (and the announcements in the ceremony and  after) wasn't translated into English unfortunately.