Planning the Wedding Door Games

Door games form an integral part of a Chinese wedding. When the groom arrives, he and his entourage will be blocked at the door by the bride’s family members and friends. This is to symbolize that they are reluctant in allowing her to be married off. The groom and his supporting buddies will thus have to pass through several obstacles before he can finally get to his bride.

But for many people, these wedding door games, designed to trick the groom and his buddies, are the fun part just before the Tea Ceremony. I had 5 “sisters” (Chi Mui) to execute the door games while Sze also had 5 “brothers” (Heng Tai).

However, we were also warned by a few relatives and friends to know the groom well enough before planning the tricks as not everyone would be as sporting. Anyway, our door game plans were quite reasonable:

Hang an orange in a stocking on the belt to hit another orange on the floor

Eat dried bee

Brush teeth with fermented bean curd

Sufficient Angpow $$$

Hula hoop

But somehow, more tricks got added on the wedding day itself, probably thought up by someone else:

Drink Guinness Stout from a straw

Sing a song

More video clips and pictures of the wedding door games can be viewed in our:

- Video Gallery:
Alcohol Straw, Orange Balls, Fear Factor & Dental Care and Ang Pow Toll

- Photo Gallery:
Traditional Ceremonies and Traditional Ceremonies – More Photos

Planning for the Tea Ceremony

Mom bought a tea set for our Tea Ceremony. So, we did not have to worry about looking for one. On the morning of our wedding day, Sze had to leave his house by 9am and depart from my house around 11am after all the door games, prayers and Tea Ceremony.

My elder sis, Fiona, planned for the food to be served that morning to welcome our guests and, the groom and his convoy. She was also in-charge of serving the tea and safekeeping our Angpows during the Tea Ceremony, together with the help of Naomi, my other sis.

In the olden days, the bride was not allowed to return home within the first 3 days after leaving. However, to make life more practical nowadays, many couples would be driven 3 times around the house to symbolize those 3 days so that the bride could come home anytime for convenience sake and so that all the ceremonies can be completed on the same day itself. Upon completing the 3-round trip, the couple would then have a meal with the bride’s family to symbolize their return home for a visit.

After undergoing all the ceremonies at the bride’s house, the same tea set and sweet Longan Tea would be passed on to the groom’s convoy to bring back for his family’s Tea Ceremony.


Upon reaching home, Sze arranged for his cousins, Khoon Leng and May May, to help serve the tea and safekeep the Angpows during the Tea Ceremony. After that, the ceremonies would proceed with Khoon Leng’s little son Breaking Open the Potty, followed by a buffet lunch.

More pictures of the Tea Ceremonies and Breaking Open the Potty, as well as a video clip, can be viewed in our:
- Photo Gallery: Traditional Ceremonies
- Video Gallery: Opening The Car Door & Breaking Open The Potty

Guo Dai Lai

For the Guo Dai Lai ceremony, Mom said that Sze’s family only needed to deliver lots of Tau Sar (Green Bean Paste) Biscuits and oranges plus a bottle of whisky. A Nyonya basket would be ideal for the delivery of such gifts on this occasion. But as we do not foresee the basket being used anymore after the wedding, we resorted to borrowing one instead.

Fortunately, Sze’s 4th Aunt was agreeable to lending us a small Nyonya basket, which we are thankful for. In addition, I also decorated my sister’s gift basket with red organza ribbons as we needed more baskets to present the Guo Dai Lai gifts. In fact, Mom was actually quite impressed with my DIY gift basket. It turned out to be pretty useful as my sis could use it too during her own wedding later on.

The baskets were used to deliver the Guo Dai Lai gifts consisting of 2 dozen Tau Sar Biscuits and another 2 dozen oranges, a bottle of Johnnie Walker whisky and an Angpow for Pin Kam (Bride Price, often incorrectly called dowry).


Both the baskets were also used again to deliver a similar set of gifts when Sze came to pick me up on the morning of the wedding day.

Traditional Wedding Items

I also found info for our traditional wedding items in the malaysiabrides forum. Many couples in KL buy their traditional items from Petaling Street or Kinrara. We were not able to find the shop in Petaling Street, so we went to the Xilinmen wedding boutique in Kinrara instead.

Xilinmen Auspicious Services is located in Pusat Perniagaan Kinrara, Taman Kinrara, along Jalan Puchong and is quite easy to find. They have got everything that you need for your traditional Chinese wedding ceremonies.

As with many other couples, we too got all the traditional wedding items that we needed from Xilinmen, such as red cloths (to hang over the doorway of both family homes), “Hei” character stickers, red clogs, a set of baby tubs and potty, etc.

The baby tubs and covered potty.

However, I did not buy the red umbrella and red lamps as I do not find them practical. But you could buy all those items there if needed, as well as many other things, including various types of sewing items.

Canopy and Furniture Rentals

While I was looking for the food caterers, I was also looking for the canopy and furniture rentals at the same time as they go together hand-in-hand. I checked the malaysiabrides forum and found that Chee Kwong Rental Services offered various types of canopy (with fluorescent lights and fan), table, chair and tablecloth rentals at pretty reasonable prices.

Chee Kwong Rental was also quite flexible with the delivery and pickup of the items. Due to their busy schedules, they would deliver a day earlier and pickup a few days later, at no extra charge, of course.

When we attended a Hari Raya open house celebration of Sze’s cousin, we found that they also used the same rental company. This showed that Chee Kwong Rental Services was a popular rental vendor for all occasions.

Catering

We needed food for our wedding lunch reception and also for Sze’s wedding eve dinner gathering. So we started out by making enquiries about various catering services from the recommendations that we received from relatives. However, with only 1.5 months to go, many of the caterers were already fully booked on our wedding day.

Fortunately, we did not have to look too long to find 2 different restaurants that we were happy to engage for our food catering requirements:

1. Dapur Nyonya Restaurant
Dapur Nyonya was recommended to me by my boss. It is jointly owned by his friend and is located in Bandar Puteri, Puchong, which is nearby our house. We went to the restaurant to try the food… and I loved it! In particular, I really liked their Nyonya Curry as it was very different from any other curry that I have had before.

We went over the menu with Alan, Dapur Nyonya’s restaurant manager. We made several changes to the menu and finally agreed on a catering package, which came standard with some nice decorations as well. This took care of the buffet lunch for our wedding reception at home (after the morning’s Traditional Ceremonies).

2. Samosa Café & Catering
We have had dinner twice previously at the Samosa Café in Taman Connaught, Cheras. During our meals, we spotted a small booklet on the table, offering various catering menus. They looked quite interesting and the food there was reasonably good.

Samosa Catering was quite flexible with their menu. So we decided to hire them to do a simple buffet dinner catering for Sze’s wedding eve gathering. The only setback was that the food and heating trays had to be picked up from the café as delivery was free only for larger orders. But it was not a big problem as Sze’s Dad and brother were around to help out with the transportation.

LCD Projector

I had been looking around at LCD projector rentals but they were all quite pricey. The rental rates depended on the ANSI Lumens, which is a measurement of the projector’s brightness. The least expensive rentals would have the lowest luminance ratings, but they might not be bright enough for a nice and clear projection.

I asked Sze if he could borrow the LCD projector from his office but he was pretty reluctant as the portable unit at his workplace was old and not as bright. I too could not borrow any from my office as there were no portable projectors there.

Next, I tried asking for the LCD projector from Mr. Koh, a client of mine. I had previously seen the projector in his office, so I knew that it was a pretty good unit. My client agreed to try his best to help out but he could not promise anything.

In the end, I am thankful that Mr. Koh managed to obtain the LCD projector and lent it to me for an evening. :)

Wedding Music

As I was compiling the music for our wedding dinner reception, I searched online for ideas and found many samples of wedding songs on amazon.com. I went through those music samples every now and then to make a playlist and shortlisted quite a number of songs.

Sze was supposed to narrow down the music selections but he had little time for that. But after much delay, we got to choose a bunch songs whereby the most important selections were for our wedding reception ceremonies:

- March-Down ceremony: Canon in D (by Pachelbel but added with a funky beat and accompaniment).

- Unity Candle ceremony: You Light Up My Life (by LeAnne Rimes).

- dinner hall March-In ceremony: I Love You (by Martina McBride).

- First Dance: (I've Had) The Time Of My Life (by Bill Medley & Jennifer Warnes).

In addition, a CD of various songs was compiled for use as soft, background dinner music while a non-stop medley of several rock & roll songs was compiled on another CD for guests to dance to after dinner.

(We had not anticipated our guests to be so outgoing, and bearing in mind the time limit set by Bankers Club, what we thought to be sufficient for the dance CD proved to be inadequate as the guests simply wanted to continue dancing and the CD had to be repeated several times!)

Video recordings of our March-Down, Unity Candle ceremony, dinner hall March-In and First Dance can be viewed in our Video Gallery at:
http://www.zenetlife.com/wedding/video.htm