As the Chinese have this saying of
"先小人后君子" - which simply means we have to trash out the bad news before going on with the good news. And I believe this is something we have to sort out before anything moves on since money and wedding is two big issues that comes in a pair.(Although not exactly perfect.)
I recently heard this little incident from my friend's friend's wedding where they did not talk much about the dollar and cents and started planning and almost till the wedding the mum of the bride mention that they need an amount of 聘金 and the amount is $8,000 and the daughter's reaction was "WHAT? MUM! ARE YOU SELLING ME AWAY?". And because of the the daughter and mum got a little fight. So the daughter went and tell his hubby to be about this incident and the hubby to be's reaction was " WHAT! DAY LIGHT ROBBERY?" And the daughter's reaction was "YOU CALLING MY MUM A ROBBER?" And than they had another fight. -.-
See, the money issue is always one of the trickest. It is almost like in a business where you do not wish to shortchange a person but on the other hand you do not wish to get "chop" as well.
From my mum's experience : The newly wed will settle the table money themselves and take all ang bao money, parents of the groom will give this amount to the bride and the bride's end will "return" a small fraction of it to the groom's parents to symbolise that everybody gets some fortune and not like we take "all" your fortune.
From Mrs Smith's mum's experience : The newly wed will settle the table money themselves, the parents of the bride will take the ang bao money of their relative's table (Example: 5 tables's earning) and the groom will still have to pay a sum of money to the bride's parents and take no return.
For me? I just want to make the world dance and forget about the price tag.
If it's that easy eh?
I am sure there are many more variation out there such as parents pay for all the tables and newly wed do not take ang bao or what not method. So what is the "real" tradition? This is really tough as Singaporean's culture is fairly much all mashed up of different dialects and especially difficult for people like me who have all my grand parents in heaven.
So how did it work out for you guys? Leave us your comments below or email me or tweet me. I will be more than happy to share it with our readers.
Mr.Smith, nah sih gua wu ji pa ban ~
