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Happily ever after - with a 70,000-yuan price tag


Mark South
Shanghai_Star
page13  2006-8-17


"...the lunar calendar means 2006 will be longer than usual and contain two springs, a rare phenomenon said to bring luck. So it's really not surprising that so many couples are eager to get married this year."

SUSAN SHEN

PR manager, Regal Hotel


The house lights dim, an expectant hush falls over the assembled crowd and a heart-rending performance of "You are the Wind Beneath my Wings" strikes up from the public address system.

Drawn by spotlights, seconds earlier busy tracing wildly across the banqueting hall's ceiling and walls, all eyes fall on a doorway at the side of the room.

The doors are swept open to reveal a man, wearing a cream and gold "prince charming" outfit, accompanied by a gaggle of bridesmaids and page boys dressed as cherubs, who make their way towards a catwalk in the middle of the room.

Taking advantage of the misdirected attention, as if by magic the man's bride has appeared on the stage in a shimmering white strapless dress.

Once united, the couple execute a symbolic dance before exchanging rings which have been brought by a small boy in an unconvincing wig overflowing with golden curls.

A picture perfect romance it may almost be, but the bride and groom are barely acquainted and the assembled crowd are not friends and family, but a mixture of media, industry insiders and soon-to-be-married couples checking out what the five-star Regal Hotel on Shanghai's Hengshan Road has to offer in the way of wedding packages.

In Shanghai's booming wedding industry, banquets, photographs, suits, dresses, flowers, make-up and jewellery are all big business and wedding shows like this one can bring in bookings worth hundreds of thousands and even millions of yuan.

"We're very pleased with how things went," said Susan Shen, public relations manager at the Regal Hotel.

"As a result of the show we've had 40 provisional bookings and 10 confirmed bookings worth a total of around 700,000 yuan (US$87,500)."

Nationwide, China's wedding industry has been valued at US$35 billion per year, and business is growing.

According to Shen, the Shanghai government has predicted that 150,000 of the city's couples will tie the knot this year, an increase of 50 per cent from 2005, largely due to the belief that 2006 is a particularly auspicious year to get married.

"In Chinese culture, the number six indicates that things will go smoothly, this year is also the Year of the Dog and in Chinese the word for a dog's bark (wang wang) sounds like the word for prosperity," she explained.

"Even more importantly, the lunar calendar means 2006 will be longer than usual and contain two springs, a rare phenomenon said to bring luck. So it's really not surprising that so many couples are eager to get married this year."

Hosting up to three wedding banquets a week, for the Regal's wedding organizers, this is both a busy and lucrative time.

The hotel's starting price per head for a wedding banquet is around 350 yuan(US$43) and with most parties at the upscale hotel involving about 200 guests, the average wedding runs to more than 70,000 yuan (US$8,750), a cost traditionally met by the parents of the groom.

As always, some people decide to spend a bit more on their big day, and Shen says she has heard of one wedding which cost more than 1 million yuan(US$125,000).

But why do couples go to such great lengths with the wedding banquet when their official wedding probably took place in a nondescript government office several months earlier?

"People want to celebrate their wedding in a big way because they don't really get the opportunity when they are just registering their marriage, for many the wedding banquet marks the real start of married life.

"That the banquet can happen so long afterwards is partly for practical reasons because it can take a lot of organizing and also because people want to wait for a propitious date to celebrate," said Shen.

Another growing phenomenon is the increasing popularity of Western stylecelebrations with Western dress for the bride and groom, and an accompanying buffet rather than the traditional multiple- course Chinese banquet.

It is a trend Shen attributes to films like "Four Weddings and a Funeral."

"More and more young people are keen on Western style banquets. Usually, a Western-style wedding is a bit less complicated than a traditional Chinese one and Western-style weddings are considered more romantic because that's what people see in the movies," said Shen.

But at the end of the day, as with weddings the world over, it may well not be the happy couple who have the final say on their wedding celebrations.

"The majority still opt for a Chinese-style wedding - couples will consider their parents' views when making their decision,and many parents insist on a Chinese banquet rather than a buffet which they are not familiar with. After all, it is often the parents who are paying," added Shen.
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