A Malaysian Chinese Wedding - morning session

I admit, it’s shameful but I just attended my very first Malaysian Chinese wedding. Since this is totally new to me (as opposed to the my other friends who has attended each other's weddings in the past decade), naturally, next to the bride and groom, I was the most excited and also the most clueless person at the wedding.

Foong, the bride woke up at 4 a.m. to prep for this.

The chee-muis.

As friends of the bride, I was part of the chee-muis or sisterhood. Chee-muis were summoned to be at bride's house by 7 a.m. on the wedding day where the first of two tea ceremony sessions would take place and before the arrival of the groom and his heng-dais or brothers.

45 minutes late but the groom and his heng-dais finally arrived with a lot of honking in 8 cars and a few "goodies".


Goodies include a whole roasted pig.


This is the dai kam che, I guess you could say she pretty much ran the show. Her noisy, high-pitched and high-volume voice gave me a headache but her energy level is impressive!

It's customary for chee-muis to hinder the groom from entering her home by testing his love for his soon-to-be wife. Some obstacles that the chee-muis came up with includes eating a 4-flavored sandwich; flavors include sweet (honey), sour (lemon pulp), spicy (wasabi) and bitter (Nescafe instant coffee powder) each representing experiences in life, washed down with some wasabi tong-yuen (rice balls, more spice for life!) and “lip-passing seaweed”.


Keith, the groom tasting the yummy 4-flavored sandwich. Can you see the wasabi oozing out of the sandwich?


Heng-dais had to help out.


Keith feeding the heng-dais spicy wasabi tong-yuen.


Passing of the seaweed.


The games are followed by some heavy angpow (red packets) negotiation (we’re talking about real money here!) and some sweet public confessions from the groom.


After about an hour of proving his love for her, the chee-muis unlocked the door and the groom saw his wife for the first time and followed by the many, many hours of tea-pouring to the elderly and the ancestors.

Smokeless joss sticks.

Click here for more pictures taken during the morning session.