It was so unreal to be the focus of one of these receptions, with a HUGE poster of US splattered across the wall. BTW, that giant 2.5m by 4.5m print was made from our earlier studio shot and it looked fantastic. Doubly amazing when you realize that the original was cropped WAY down to get just the two of us. It was completely clean - no jaggies at all. (How'd they do that?) But is nice to be married, finally!
In a nutshell, I left the hotel at 9:00AM (where the reception was held later) and went to her house, bouquet in hand, to "find" my love and bring her back with me to the hotel. When I reached her house I was ready - I had a pocket full of red envelopes with the Chinese equivalent of about $1 for the kids who stood on the other side of her family's door and wouldn't let me in until I crossed their palms with it. So, after pumping 20 or so of these through the mail slot (felt like I was in Reno!), they finally opened the door and I proceeded to search the house for her, calling out in a big voice (and in Chinese) "Where's my lovely Tao!" (or something to that effect). After a few minutes I eventually "found" her in the back bedroom, but, like the front door, more kiddies were making sure I didn't get in easy. Finally, they too relented after I pushed some envelopes through and I found my beautifully dressed bride sitting on the bed waiting for me with a lovely smile. Then, after a quick kiss and helping her on with her shoes, back we went to the living room to eat traditional bowls of rice porrige/soft-boiled eggs - each with its own unique taste. Then, we gave pressies to the folks, took a ton of pictures with all on hand and finally, whoosh! down I carried her (three flights!) to the waiting car and more kiddies, who set off an huge load of firecrackers and rained us with confetti. It was really neat to see so many kids having so much fun just because of us - they were a really important throughout the entire day.
After we arrived back at the hotel we hurried to change into our traditional Chinese wedding costumes and hurried downstairs to the reception. Funny, when we appeared in the banquet room, there was another wedding reception being held right next to ours.(that Sunday was an auspicious day for getting married - there were black limos driving people around EVERYwhere) But when they saw us walk by in our dazzling costumes, over half of those guests turned around and came over to OUR room to gawk and take pictures of us! Since Tao had a veil over her face, I used a red "cord" to lead her with and when all the preparations were ready, I did just that up to the front of the room, stopping in front of that awesome poster.
For the next 2 and 1/2 hours we stood there and went through a variety of things - people giving speeches to us, our giving speeches to them, exchanging rings, pouring champagne, cutting the cake, singing songs, dancing, and, of course, drinkng toasts with everyone in the room, one-by-one! Needless to say things got a more-than fuzzy towards the end, especially after we found that the women often wanted to drink as much as the men!
Half way through all this I was told it was time to change clothes again, so we ran upstairs, and I have to say that Tao looked lovely in her green China-style dress. I brought over a couple of photo albums of pictures from our recent trip to western China (next door to this gallery), and a nice book with pictures of California, so folks had a great time poring over those while we changed.
Later, after all the festivities were over and we saw the last of our smiling, swaying guests out to their taxis, we finally sat down for a well-deserved rest. As I looked over at my new wife's beautiful smile and then at the shining rings on our fingers, I had to say it was definitely the most enjoyable day of my life. I'm not sure why but I have always had good luck in China and always feel very "at home" there. Its such a kick to see so many interesting places, people and things - all of which are usually seen by most westerners only in magazines. Well, I'll stop here - thanks very much to everyone for looking.