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Wedding Industry Flourishes In China

As a matter of fact, people have more and more extravagant ideas, as everybody wants his/her wedding to be unforgettable. Not content with having a beautiful white dress and an impressive photo album, more and more Chinese couples want originality. In recent years, underwater weddings, church weddings and even tree-planting weddings have flourished. The ceremony is more important than the certificate itself and people are ready to spend a lot of money. Of course not everybody can afford a luxurious wedding, with an average cost representing roughly six times Beijing's average monthly salary. However, more and more young couples of the new Chinese middle class can offer themselves a wedding their parents could not have imagined.

Nowadays, the October and May holidays are still the hottest periods. Other busy days vary according to how much "luck" the date can bring, although more and more young people forget the tradition of choosing an auspicious day for their union.

According to traditional beliefs, days with even numbers are considered the luckiest. The Chinese word for number eight, for instance, sounds like "prosperous" and is therefore favored. However, there are exceptions to the rule. No. four, although it is an even number, sounds too much like "death" in Chinese. Does that mean nobody wants to get married on the fourth of the monthω Sure, it is true that four sounds like death. But four is also ‘fa' on the musical scale, and ‘fa' means prosperity and luck.

It is quite a peculiar result of globalization that China, a country where white is traditionally the color of mourning and death, is becoming a big producer of white wedding garments, gloves and veils!

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