Attended a chinese wedding

I just come from a Chinese wedding. Basically weddings here are much like ours. Even buddism is/was the major religion today’s weddings are very western. Still, there are differences less in style but in what is important and how to celebrate.
First, getting a certificate from the government office is celebrated just with a few friends and/or closest family. This is all between get in, sign, get out to a nice small ceremony. Important is that this is not called wedding and does not mean too much besides being husband and wife for the government.

Secondly, because most couples are not Christian the church wedding part as in western countries is substituted or reduced to what we normally have after the wedding: the food/dinner part.
Considering the one-child policy one could think that these dinners would be small but actually even the small ones are much bigger that the average wedding parties in Germany. There are many reasons for it. One is that the one-child policy is not old enough. Most parents have many brothers and sisters. Of cause they have also children, not to mention that the children might also have already children. But even if the parent generation are 4*4 persons, they have only one child each. This results in about 32 people. Calculating 10-15 friends as probably common in Germany and about half as many living partners for each, bride and groom,  we can equal to total amount to about 90.
But this number still would be a small wedding. Normally classmates from middle school on are invited. And I am talking about friends as in people you were in class with and talk to every couple months or year. This way parties wich more than 300 people are celebrating.

The standard (and wanted) present for the wedded couple is money delivered in red envelopes. Sometimes there is another small present with it. Short weddings starting with a professional host introducing bride and groom, announcing the walk down to the stage through the guests already siting on the dinner table, the couple exchanging the voles, thanks to the parents and the host saying: Let’s eat.
Long weddings have games before the dinner and thereby extend the time the guests have to wait for the food. I guess that a lot of the guests are more for the food than games. After the dinner everyone goes home. If the restaurant is fast, than they already sart packing the wedding decoration before half of the guests are gone.

Summerized, I liked to see the wedding but I enjoy a relaxed small gathering with the best friends more than this mass fiest.