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Hello again and welcome back to America under the Microscope.【闲话美国】Hello James.

Hello Lulu.

The Golden Week, a lot of people in China are choosing to get married, choosing to have their wedding ceremony then because it’s a long holiday.

Good choice.

And what about in America? So do people have specific holidays that they would like to get married?

Oh yeah, the first weekend of September which we call Labor Day weekend is a popular one. It's a three-day weekend with nice weather.

So it's kind of the same, nice weather, not too hot, not too cold, and then longer holiday.

Yes we can get family to come.

So let's talk about American wedding, shall we? We talked about weddings and marriage and all that with Anlan before in the UK, I don't suppose there’ re that many differences.

Not really, because you know, we do share a lot of culture between the UK and America. I mean it's a little bit more complicated with a lot of different immigrants bringing parts of their traditions. But in general we do have a traditional idea of wedding in America, several parts to it.

So when I think of American weddings, I think of perhaps your usual church you know and then the vows and then white dress.

All right, if you’ve seen movies or TV shows, those weddings, they'll be in a church on this big ceremony, you have a priest or some other religious authority at the front. And yes, that does happen and it's not too far from the truth. Although there's a lot going on behind the scenes.

OK. So could you walk us through the steps?

So we're gonna go through the steps what we consider a wedding in this episode. First we'll start off with the bachelor or bachelorette’s party, rehearsal dinner, the wedding reception and finally the honeymoon.

Sounds like a quite complex procedure. So let's start from the parties, the bachelors and bachelorettes,单身汉和单身女.

Right. Bachelors for man, bachelorettes for woman.

If you watch any American TV show, you probably have heard of these or have seen these on TV.

Right. These are basically the celebration of their last, we say last party as the unmarried person.

Last bit of freedom.

So the bachelor’s party will be planned by your best man.

Hang on a minute, so best man 伴郎 is usually your best friend.

Usually or a brother.

A brother.

Mine was my brother. So they will plan it based on the grooms, you know interests, they might go out to bars and drink, they might do games, the activities are varied. The bachelorette party for the woman is planned by the maid of honor.

Maid of honor. So you can have many bridesmaids, but you have only one maid of honor. That's your main bridesmaid.

Correct. And traditionally, this used to be the day before the wedding, but nowadays people will tend to do it maybe the weekend before, because you don't want to be like partying and drunk and the wedding is next day.

So there are no specific... but when we watch TV or movies, you see a lot of these parties going really really wild, crazy. But in fact it's like you said, it's more about what kind of person you are as a groom, as a bride to be, right? So it's your friends or your family people who are really close to you planning something that they think you would like.

Yeah, so for example, more commonly for a bachelor’s party, they might do a bar crawl where they just visit bar and have drinks. Bachelorette parties, they might do things like a spa day and then drinks or things like that.

You feel pretty.

The next event is the rehearsal dinner.

Rehearse, rehearsal. Rehearsal isn't that what you do before you put on a performance? You practice?

Well, think of... a wedding kinda is a performance.

It’s for other people really.

So yeah you have to practice the ceremony, you have to go through and make sureyou know, okay the ceremony when they walk down the aisle where people need to be sitting, where you know the ushers and all the other helpers they need to be. You have to  do a practice and make sure everyone knows their job.

所以这是一个婚礼程序的预演. But why do you call it rehearsal dinner? Surely you don't have to rehearse how to eat.

No because after the practice after the rehearsal， you tend to have a dinner. And this dinner will be the family, so the grooms family the bride's family and the other people who are helping you.

I'm gonna be really blunt here to ask, who's going to pay for this rehearsal?

Traditionally the groom’s family.

The groom's family? Okay. And that's usually the day before the wedding.

This one is the day before the wedding. So if your wedding is going to be Saturday, your rehearsal is Friday.

So rehearsal dinner is generally only the two families, not like your extended guests.

And the rehearsal dinner probably is not gonna be that formal, but this depends. A lot of them are a bit more casual because, to be fair, you're most likely going to be tired. You also want to go to bed early.

Well, because you have to get up early. That's understandable.

Yeah. And then comes the big day, the wedding day. So weddings are almost always in the morning. So the ceremonies are usually around ten.

Is it always in a church?

No, many are in a church while other you know depending on religious beliefs, their version of church, but some people do weddings in public parks or...

Outdoor wedding.

Outdoor wedding. Some people do it at their home because they have a big enough property, so there are lots of places to do it. So...

Do you have to be religious to hold your wedding ceremony in a church?

Most churches require at least one person to be a member of it.

Okay, I see. So usually you have to talk to people in the church beforehand obviously.

Yeah. So if you're religious, you want to get married in a church, you do have to make an appointment to make sure nobody else is getting married that time.

So, there's that. So the wedding day, traditionally the bride and groom will not see each other this day because it's bad luck.

Oh, yeah, that's right. It is bad luck for the groom to see the bride in wedding dress before the actual day.

Yep. So when the wedding starts, the groom, the best man, groomsman, maid of honor, bridesmaids are already at the stage with the officiate. And then the father of the bride and the bride will walk down the aisle together. Father will give away the  bride to the future husband, that's at the front.

They'll do the vows, do the ceremony, exchange rings, do the kiss. Then the couple will go back down the aisle, everyone will stand up and clap, and usually get into a car and drive away. And this is the end of the ceremony, but not the end of the wedding.

They get in a car and drive away, what are the rest of us doing?

Most likely, you're now heading to the reception party.

Oh, okay. So reception is more like the party after the ceremony.

Yeah. So the ceremony is super serious. It is formal, people need to be dressed. Guests may not be the same.

Yeah that's the same in the UK. So some of them they are invited to the ceremony, others are invited to the reception.

Right. Reception will have more people. The weddings tend to be family for sure, close friends, this will depend on how big your venue is, and then reception will always be someplace else. This can be a restaurant, hotel, a community centre that you rented out. My cousin’s wedding, her reception was on a farm.

Wow, I know, you talked about like your family owned ranches.

Yeah. We are from the countryside. So this is very normal where I'm from. And then the reception itself, this is the, think of this is the dinner. So like in China, your ceremony and the dinners are kind of like one event.

One event together, that's because we don't really have like dancing afterwards, like that sort of party.

So at the reception, people sit at the tables, the new couple and the other people, the best man, maid of honor will sit at the front, and during this time people will eat. There will be speeches.

Who makes the speeches because in...

There are four.

Four because in the UK, it's only seems to be men making the speeches.

The two fathers traditionally, the best man, and the maid of honor will give us a speech.

Okay. Um so perhaps less sexist in this way.

In America, anyone can make a speech, anybody can get on the microphone and give their wishes although you should only do this if you plan on saying nice things.

That's probably why you don't invite your exes to the wedding.

Or you gotta be careful, there's usually alcohol at reception.

Exactly, you see Wedding crashers.

Right, that in film. But on top of this, there will also be dances and there are important dances at an American wedding.

First dance.

First dance, mother son dance and father daughter dance.

Oh that's interesting, that I think is different because in the UK you only have the first dance of the new couple. So in the United States, then you have the mother and son, and then the father and daughter.

And then afterward, some people whoever in the wedding, you can go up and you can pay the groom or pay the bride a dollar and a guest can dance with them.

That sounds almost comical. Why would you pay them a dollar?

It's just a fun game, and then after this, this is when the throwing of things begins, so this is when they throw the bouquet. But not just the bouquet, you also throw the garter.

The garter, 吊袜带. it’s on top of the stocking.

Correct. So the bride will sit down in a chair, the groom will reach out the dress, take off the garter and throw it to all the single men.

Is that the same thing as throwing a bouquet to single women to see who is the next one to get married?

Although men tend to run away from it.

OK, some things never change really.

Traditionally this would have been paid for most likely, by the bride's family.

Both the reception and the wedding itself? That's a huge difference compared with Chinese culture as in weddings are generally paid for, I think by the groom side. So why is it? What's the origin of that tradition?

I’m not entirely sure what the origin is, I think it's more just about equality. And then after the wedding, reception, honeymoon. We all know what a honeymoon is. So the couple will go on a vacation.

And who's gonna pay for that?

Traditionally the groom’ s family will pay for it.

I suppose that does strike a balance. So bride's family will take care of the wedding and groom’s family will take care of the honeymoon. However is it true that once you reach a certain age or you go over a certain age, families they stop paying because I mean you're old enough to pay for yourself.

Yeah. Well, nowadays a lot more of the cost is shared by everyone because weddings are an expensive endeavor. On average, American weddings about thirty thousand dollars.

That's only an average.

That’s only an average, you can do it for a lot less.

Tell you what, we are going to continue talking about the wedding and also its cost. And then we probably will delve a little bit more into the cost of it and the potential problems with it in the advanced episode.

Sounds good.

I'll see you next time.

Bye everyone.

Bye.