Weddings in Hong Kong

Tonight I bumbled up to Mong Kok for a wedding in a seafood restaurant.

Reading that last sentence, I realise how odd getting married in Hong Kong must be to Western eyes.

Weeks before the ceremony, it's obligatory to have your photo taken in a plethora of representative Hong Kong locations: Duddell Street steps, the tram stop by Southorn Playground, next to a mound of cardboard on Rat Street, wandering through a sewage farm in the New Territories, wearing only a pair of skimpy underpants while being groped by an enormous white dog.

These are important photographs, because they'll remind the wedding guests what you look like. Since there's at least four costume changes in the wedding reception, people might otherwise think the bride was replaced by some random bint in a cheongsam.

Not that most people would have a chance at noticing, because they're too involved with trying to eat twelve different courses of the most glutinous monstrosities Cantonese cuisine has to offer. I fail to understand what circumstances exist where it's acceptable to serve sea cucumber, and even if you have the excuse of being vegetarian, the blighters will only serve you up a reasonable facsimile of a sea cucumber. Except there's nothing reasonable about a sea cucumber.

Finally, as it's a meal in Hong Kong, the wedding will take the form of a traditional shouting competition, but with a bunch of Filipinos playing KC and the Sunshine Band at top volume, while you keep doing shots of quarter-price tequila and bellowing incomprehensibly at the happy couple.

I don't get invited to weddings much.  (written under the influence of a bit too much whisky and misanthropy, in the taxi going home)