Under the veils, times are changing

Western brides have more leeway in choosing their assistants for their big day. Originally called maids of honor, bridesmaids can be unmarried but it is quite acceptable for a married woman to be the chief bridesmaid these days when she is referred to as the matron of honor.

But like China, weddings around the world are changing in form. In China, it has been a tradition for the bride and groom to share drinks with their guests and light cigarettes for them but in June this year the Global Times reported the first non-smoking wedding in Shanghai, an event that broke tradition in a big way. It was the first major occasion when a bride and groom did not light cigarettes as a mark of respect for their guests. Many couples in China who are allergic to alcohol now ask their groomsman and bridesmaid to do the social drinking for them.

While weddings in different countries have a variety of approaches there is one thing that links weddings around the world - food. Chinese weddings involve a banquet where during the feast the bride and groom visit each table and pay individual attention to their guests.

In the West, like China, the wedding banquet is the high point after the church service. In the West, tradition has it that the bride's father pays for the wedding and brides' fathers these days face very large bills. In the UK and the US, couples are seeking larger, more elaborate wedding feasts. The current trend is to have the food prepared by a television celebrity chef but food prepared by celebrity chefs is often more expensive than food ordered at top restaurants.

Add to this cost of liquor (for wedding guests are usually very thirsty) and families face very large bills.

Couples contribute

In March this year, Reuters reported that the average cost of a wedding in the US had reached $27, 000 but a wedding in New York would set a father back an average $65,824. One of the changes, however, is that these days 75 percent of the couples getting married are contributing to the costs of their wedding.

Another wedding tradition is the wedding cake, a multi-tiered creation that the couple cuts and distributes to the guests. In Queen Victoria's day, the cake was a rich fruit cake covered in white icing and the bridesmaids would take a slice home. But these cakes were more like fortune cookies for the bridesmaids because baked into the cake were little gifts - if a bridesmaid got a slice with a ring in it, she would be married within a year, a penny signified coming wealth and a thimble showed she would stay unmarried for her life.

Today most weddings have the traditional wedding cake but some brave couples are offering ornate cupcakes instead while others are treating guests to sushi and wine tasting.

In China, the wedding album is an elaborate affair and involves the bride and groom in long sessions at a photographer's studio as they change in and out of various costumes. This is done before the wedding day itself. In the West, the photographer (or these days more often the video cameraman) follows the bride and groom from the moment they wake up, through the church ceremony and onto the wedding feast and party.

When Queen Victoria got married in 1840 she changed the way weddings were conducted. From then on brides wore elaborate white dresses and the favored piece of music was the wedding march from Mendelssohn's A Midsummer Night's Dream.

Too many toasters

Guests at Victorian weddings were expected to send gifts which went on display. In Victorian times, the gifts were ostentatious and not so practical. Later gifts became the basis for a couple to set up their home. But then came the problem of relatives and friends buying the same gifts and many young couples wound up with eight toasters and four dinner sets.

Brides began listing the gifts they would appreciate and people would tick off the gifts they bought. Then it became a marketing tool and shops began keeping the lists for the couples - the first bridal registry apparently appeared in a department store in Chicago in 1924. Now major department stores in cities worldwide offer this service. But this is also changing as brides can now list their desired gifts on the Internet and guests can quickly see what is needed and what has already been bought.

In China, this custom is not so popular as most couples prefer the more practical hongbao (red envelope) cash gift tradition. Giving cash to newly-married couples is also a tradition in Japan, Greece, Italy, Poland and other countries. This too is changing with some newlyweds now offering POS machines at banquets to make it easy for guests to deliver their gifts of cash.