My First Taiwanese Wedding

Well this weekend I experienced a new Taiwanese thing, a wedding. One of my co-workers Doug is getting married (offically) in South Africa to my kindergarten boss Allison in the next week. But they had a luncheaon thing this weekend for all or their friends and family in Taiwan. It was a mixture of a lot of HESS people and Allison's extended family. The fun thing about weddings here is that the bride doesn't just wear 1 dress like back home, she gets to wear 5 or 6! I've asked around about this phenominum though, and I've discovered that you rent most of your dresses, otherwise I swear for me I would go banqrupt buying 6 Vera Wang gowns......But how fun would that be, going shopping for 6 dresses. Anyhoo, I only saw 2 of her dresses, as the other ones were just soley for pictures and for the ceremony in South Africa. But she did wear a big puffy purple one that reminded me of some barbie gowns I had as a child. I think that's the fashion here, puffy, colorful, very girly. They are kind of like grad gowns back home.

Now onto the food. Oh some of it was sooo good. Some a bit questionable, but I tried everything. I had the pleasure of trying sea aneome (or sea cucumber). It's not bad actually, not great, it kind of has the texture of a weird mushroom. And they brought us a soup with a whole dead chicken inside it, still with the feet, head, etc, it was interesting. It was a broth type soup, tasty but not very visually appealing. The seafood however was amazing. They brought us giant crabs, and shrimps to munch on. So good, and back home you just wouldn't be able to get that for a resonable price like here. The pic of me is with a giant crab claw, and David is eating the giant shrimp. David is studying Chinese here in Taiwan, so it was nice sitting next to him during all of the ceremony stuff, because he was able to translate it for me. Handy.

Then there was the drama of how much to give in the red envelope for the wedding present...$1000nt, $2000nt??? I knew one thing before hand, not to give a dividend of 4 in there anywhere as that is bad luck. I don't know why, but it's a big no no. In the end I was a little cheap and only gave $1000nt, but I think Doug and Allison will forgive me....We did get some nice party favours at the end too. A giant box full of moon and pineapple cakes. Yummy to say the least.