Weddingbee Blog

Mr. Milkshake’s family threw us a fabulous pre-wedding Chinese banquet with a fantastically plated 10 course meal at Kirin in Richmond, BC. Mr. Milkshake’s mom had gifted me the cutest cheongsam I’ve ever seen, with two lovebirds, which, as you’ll notice, is not red (shame on me!). 

I was a complete dolt and got lost with the maid of honor trying to find the place (even though I’d been there before!!)…so instead of showing up at 5:30 to do a tea ceremony before everyone else arrived, we rolled in at 6:15 and the dinner started with my arrival. I felt terrible that we didn’t do the tea ceremony. Admittedly this is the farthest thing from my culture (which, being a mixed child [ukranian/philippino] is nothing but plain old “Canadian”), but I felt bad that we didn’t do it. I’d even researched exactly what to do, because it was certainly confusing to someone like me walking into it blindly, and Mr. Milkshake wasn’t any more enlightened on the subject than I had been. Hold the cups with both hands, kneel, a certain person sits on the left a certain person sits on the right etc., etc. Mr. Milkshake refused to let me work the tea ceremony into our wedding day, because everyone had already been “prepared to do it” that day, and I blew it. I felt so embarassed, like I let his whole family down, and perhaps I was more hard on myself than anyone else. Thankfully when I showed up, he had a huge smile on his face, was super loving and happy to see me, and didn’t make any side remarks about me screwing up.Did anyone else out there screw up something culturally important to your in-laws? Thankfully they’re pretty westernized so it wasn’t the hugest deal. In the end, the rest of the evening was fantastic, and I think everyone really enjoyed themselves, and my family, a lot of whom are beyond wary of seafood, had some enjoyable dishes to eat.I went to the washroom and came back to see this fish on a table where they were plating the meals. Before they let me sit down, one of the guys at my table wrestled my camera out of my hands and made me show him how to make it click continuously….ie 6 shots per second. I thought they were going to clink the glasses for us to kiss. A lot of enthusiastic glass clinking happened that night, surprisingly a lot more than at the wedding itself! When I sat down at my chair I saw they had given me the head….with bones splaying out in every direction! He was able to capture my reaction (for the record, despite how it looks, I don’t think I was screaming, I think I was laughing my head off).I hopped over to my mom’s table, where I gifted her my special plate, which almost sounds very cruel of me, but I know she loves fish heads. I didn’t realize ’til about the third or fourth course that my 50mm lens was indeed capable of taking pictures of my food (I’d kept it tucked away till then because it made everything so much larger than life that you usually have to back way up to take a photo of people).Sesame dumpling-ish things. So delicious. I walked around to the tables after the dinner and stole the ones that weren’t eaten.    Are you participating in any cultural ceremonies that honor your FI’s background?