2025, Family, Gatherings

Marry Girl Cake

29 Comments

My next-door neighbors’ son is getting married right after Christmas.  He met his fiancée when he was stationed in Taiwan a few years ago (Marine).  They moved here early last year after he retired; yes, that’s right, you get to retire from the Marines when you’re 30 if you join up right after high school.  He’s attending the Carlson School of Business for his MBA and she’s working in financial planning. 

Zander and Nina will be getting married in Taiwan, where her family still lives.  Apparently there are quite a few “traditions” that weddings incorporate in Taiwan, even in this day and age.  This is from their wedding website:

The wedding ceremony then will begin with a “bride pick-up” ceremony (迎娶), where the groom arrives at the bride’s home with music, groomsmen, and playful games. After the groom complete the “mission,” they travel together to the groom’s house. A tea ceremony follows, where the couple serves tea to elders in exchange for blessings and red envelopes.  The evening ends with a lively banquet, sometimes held outdoors as a traditional 流水席 (Liúshuǐxí), filled with delicious dishes, toasts, and laughter. Of course, mostly seafood in Taiwan.

Another tradition that wasn’t listed on the website was the sending out of engagement cakes – see the photo above.   YA and I are not invited – obviously it’s a small number of folks heading to Taiwan from the US the day after Christmas for this wedding.  This doesn’t bother me – I would have been shocked to be included and we couldn’t have afforded it anyway.  But it was nice that my neighbors brought us over an engagement cake (called “marry girl cake” in the past) which are sent out by the bride’s family to announce the upcoming nuptials.  I looked up the label to find out it was a red bean variety but then YA translate-googled the Chinese ingredient list and found out it also has pork.  So we got to admire it, but didn’t eat it.

Weddings are way down on my list of favorite things.  Way down.  Too much pomp, too much emphasis on the day and not the life afterwards, too much expense, too much “it’s the bride’s day”.  My first wedding was pretty much run by my mother; I made a few key decisions but she took care of everything else.  It was too big as far as I was concerned but at least it was very low key.  My second wedding was at a table at Good Earth; the judge joined us but didn’t stay for lunch.  Our witnesses were our waiter Philip and the waitress Sarah from the next section over.  The restaurant gifted us with a little centerpiece and comped our dessert.  Even though the marriage didn’t go the distance, I’m still happy with the memory of that wedding day.

YA will not expect a big flashy wedding from me… if she ever ties a knot.  I’ve been sending her psychic messages for years…. just one word…. “elope”!

Any good wedding stories?

29 thoughts on “Marry Girl Cake”

  1. My brother had two weddings in one day. His wife is Vietnamese. The Vietnamese wedding was similar to what you describe, with a few minor differences.

    They had a traditional Christian wedding first. My tiny s-i-l struggled with her gown and too-large shoes. After that, her sisters took her to her family’s home in St. Paul. Our family went to their house to claim her. We brought large gifts of food, including a roasted pig on a tray which required two of us to carry. Tien (my s-i-l) wore a traditional red wedding gown. They had a Buddhist ceremony in her parents’ home. It was emotional and lovely. After the ceremony, we enjoyed a feast as a united family.

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  2. My parents eloped in December, 1942. Dad was in the Air Force stationed in Texas. Mom took the train south from Mankato, where she was a college student. They were married Christmas Day after the Christmas service in a Lutheran Church in Texarkana. They didn’t know a soul there, but the whole congregation stayed for the ceremony. Dad had a best man. Mom didn’t have any attendants. The next day she took the train back to Mankato. They didn’t see one another again until 1945 after Dad returned from England. Mom had to keep the marriage secret, since college students couldn’t be married. They were married for 70 years.

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  3. My first wedding (1975)was in Great Neck, NY, in the garden/back yard of my inlaws. We managed to rent a chuppah (canopy), as Eddie was Jewish. My folks and sister flew in… there were probably 40 people, the rabbi was a friend, and the wedding cake was to die for, as they say. I wore a white-with-blue-trim “hippie dress”, the reception was catered, also right there.

    For my wedding with Husband (1980), we eloped. Spent the weekend at a Storytelling Festival in Mineral Point Wisc. that his friend was in, and on Monday went to the JP at the Winona County Courthouse with our friends J & C. Reception was at McVey’s Ice Cream Parlor. : )

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  4. My wedding was low-budget. In parents-in-law backyard, on a Saturday afternoon. Maybe 50 people attended, mostly family, a few friends. Just as the judge was about to start the ceremony, a neighbor a few houses down the alley revved up his lawnmower and started mowing. No one could hear what the judge was saying, so he stopped talking. Thankfully, my quick-thinking uncle (who unfortunately passed away last week) dashed down the alley and asked the neighbor to hold off mowing for a few minutes. He did and we continued the ceremony.

    What no one but Sandra and I heard from the judge was, “You know, not many couples get a last-minute chance to reconsider like this one.” And he gave us a knowing grin.

    I was also surprised when he paused after we’d recited our vows (which I wrote) and told everyone he thought our vows were some of the best, most sincere he’d ever heard in his career as a marrying judge. Pretty cool.

    He was such a good guy that my mom hired him to perform her second marriage.

    Chris in Owatonna

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  5. My sister met her husband at the beginning of school for her first teaching job. After a week they decided to get married at Christmas, on my birthday as it happens. They missed their 60th by three months, but he was deep in dementia.
    I have told on here the story of Sandra’s and my very brief dating before getting married 7 and 1/2 weeks later, 7 months after my sister did. We made it to 60 but she did not understand.

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  6. My husband and I met backpacking and just wanted to be married and together so I had a tiny wedding in St Paul(my parents came here from upstate NY) in December which was my excuse for wearing a cherry red velvet dress (short skirt since 1971). A friend who had just become a judge married us(we were his first wedding) in the courthouse in St Paul. We had a tiny 2 tiered wedding cake at Burch’s in Hopkins for our parents, matron of honor and best man (good friend & her spouse), my brother and aunt. We made it to 52 years tho last 10 yrs Jack had dementia. He always recognized me with a smile though.

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  8. Rise and Shine, Baboons,

    The wedding I liked was my son’s wedding 5 years ago, in a park on October 11 on a stunning autumn day. It was he and his wife, Lou and I, and the minister. It was GREAT. I should have done that.

    I am sure I have described the wedding of Lou’s niece before. But I will do it again. This took place around 2002, or so. It was a wedding that seemed pretty ill advised after I heard the groom put his fist through a cupboard door during an argument with the bride the summer before the wedding. But they went ahead with it.

    As the bridal party proceeded down the aisle, an intense thunderstorm rolled in. It was loud at a distance, but soon the lightening and thunder was right over the church. Between the lightening crashes, the intense rain and the thunder we could hear little. This remained constant through the service, until the lightening hit something on the church roof, then made its way into the sound system of the guy recording the wedding from the choir balcony. It knocked the guy unconscious. It was an omen.

    The groom was in a car accident a few years later on Interstate 35 in Iowa when he pulled over to help someone in a snowstorm. He and the person on the side of the road were hit by a semi, and the groom nearly died. The lack of judgement he displayed in many areas of life was finally diagnosed as bipolar disorder after this incident. The broken leg he suffered got infected and he refused to take Dr’s orders seriously, so he came to a gathering while Lou’s mother was dying with an IV stand, clumping loudly around the nursing home. His behavior was so obnoxious that he disrupted several family gatherings by picking fights with people. This added to my list of reasons why I refused to attend the gatherings. He is now a MAGA gun dealer. The rumor is that Lou’s niece pretty much supports the family financially.

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  9. I’m sensing a pattern among Baboons. No long engagements, possibly no Hallmark down-on-one-knee-with-proffered-ring proposal. We fit that pattern.

    We met in mid-November, 1969. By March we had decided to get married. We opted for June (why wait?) but our parents begged for a little more time, so August was set. We wanted simple arrangements with the minimum number of hoops through which to jump. We designed our own invitations. Robin made her dress. We asked Robin’s father to marry us. He had been a minister before he became a college professor and could renew his license. That started a tradition wherein he married Robin’s two sisters as well when their time came.

    Our ceremony was in the morning (we wanted dawn but that posed a hardship for the guests) on an island on the Carleton College campus. The reception was in Robin’s parents’ back yard, with bundt cakes and fruit. By noon we were on our way to a honeymoon in Colorado. That was 55 years ago.

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  10. The x and my family were well acquainted. At the reception there was a program of our pictures from through the years.
    A good friend with an amazing voice sang this song. Tears were shed.

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  12. A few weeks after our Good Earth wedding, we threw a party although we didn’t tell folks it was a wedding party ahead of time. I made a three-tiered coconut cake with chocolate sauce on the side. Skip to 4:20 to see why:

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  13. Word is my Dad’s dad and his fiance eloped. Different religions back in 192_ whatever and that was probably easiest.
    And Mom’s mom, her parents didn’t like his family and the mom threw all the family treasures in a ditch so the next family couldn’t get them. (Yeah, I don’t know; the story has always been fuzzy and no one is around to clarify anymore).

    Kelly and I were engaged for 2.5 years I think… I told the story recently of the minister coming to my bachelor party.
    We had a fun wedding, but nothing too unusual.
    I’ve been at some really fun weddings. Nothing where anyone passed out or ran out or objected.

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  16. My first wedding was in Greenland. It was highly unusual in many ways, including my black wedding dress and the flowers in my wedding bouquet being stolen from the reception desk in the transit hall of the hotel where I worked. The marriage ceremony took place in the chapel on base witnessed only by wasband’s best man and one of my coworkers from the kitchen. The subsequent celebration took place at the hotel where I worked.

    After a delightful meal attended by an assortment of Danish and Greenlandic coworkers and American Gis, I went to invite the receptionist to a glass of champagne. That was the least I could do to compensate for the flowers.

    As I entered the transit hall, a naked man came running down the stairs from the first floor where hotel guests stayed. In hot pursuit was a fully clothed man yelling that he was going to kill him. The naked man managed to barricade himself in the women’s bathroom adjacent to the reception desk, while his pursuer was assaulting the door with his fists.

    I’m pretty sure I’ve told this whole story before, so I’ll spare you more gory details, but it was a most memorable wedding. Come to think of it, my second wedding was no less memorable for different reasons.

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  17. I love all your stories and wish Husband and I had eloped. We had a modest wedding but eloping would have been easier. I was the one who proposed, or at least pointed out that our relationship was headed in that direction. When I told my mom we were engaged, she cried (not tears of joy). The crying was followed by months of arguing over wedding plans, stress, and more tears. I paid for many things myself, including my gown (traditional white). The wedding itself was a series of small disasters. The photographer ditched us without taking many pictures. The singer was terrible. Husband’s five-year-old brother hid under a pew and wouldn’t come out. It snowed and my dress dragged in the slush. We survived it all and have been married for 47 years.

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  19. I have attended many wedding feasts in Taiwan. The best food is the feasts that are served at tables set up on the street and food cooked under a tent set up nearby. The most boring feasts happen in hotel ball rooms where the same crew cooks the same things week-in and week-out.
    The post sent me scrambling to learn of US Marines stationed in Taiwan. When I originally went to live there, the US Military presence was still several thousand troops. That ended at the end of 1979, and other than “embassy types” like a Naval Attache’ etc. there were none. I left Taiwan 7 years ago, when there were no US troops officially on the ground. Now there are about 500 in total.

    On a separate topic entirely,
    Last week my WordPress page was suspended. I was alarmed, because I’ve been posting stuff there since 2014, and it was all potentially lost. (Not that it was valuable, but I spent many hours in the last few months getting daily posts scheduled forward to the end of November of 2026.) Apparently, WordPress’s software had identified me as a spammer. Who? ME?. Anyway, all it took was a note or 2 to the Artificial Intelligence, then another note for a human to look at, and all was set right again. Check it out, and sing what’s there. http://www.aboksu.wordpress.com

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