Belles, beaus, bells & bows

Tying the knot overseas is becoming increasingly popular among Chinese. But if you're going to do it, don't forget to hire a rain stopper

When the Hong Kong actor Chung Chun-to, known as Kenny Bee, 61, married his long-time partner Fan Jiang in Bali, Indonesia, last year, the all-white themed apparel and the sumptuous venue, filled with top Hong Kong celebrities, made it one of the most talked about weddings of 2014.

In exactly the same venue about eight months later, another happy couple married, but this time the pair in question came without the celebrity trappings, just two ordinary citizens from Beijing wanting to celebrate in style.

"We went on a trip to Bali beforehand comparing different hotels for the wedding," says Vivienne Li, 26. "We eventually chose Alila Villas Uluwatu, where Kenny Bee's wedding was held. When I first saw their photos online I was struck by the venue's unique design, like a birdcage, and with its stunning sea views."

When she and her husband tied the knot in April, 50 guests flew in to celebrate with them.

"It was truly unique, one of the happiest moments of my life," Li says.

Like Li and her husband many other marrying couples in China are opting to go overseas to celebrate their big day. Pan Zhenyu, co-founder of Mocha Wedding in Beijing, says that the trend began to be particularly noticeable last year.

Mocha Wedding was founded in 1999 and has a staff of 80, making it one of the biggest wedding planning companies in China that customize weddings for the better off.

The company organized more than 200 such weddings last year, 10 percent of them outside China, Pan says.

"There has been a big increase in the number of people inquiring about these overseas weddings, and those going ahead with them. Some couples come to us saying they want a memorable wedding overseas but have no idea of where they want to go."

Pan says that if elderly parents are to attend the wedding and there are to be many guests it is best to keep the flying time under six hours, and without transfers.

Lei Tao, co-founder of UniqueWay, a company in Beijing that specializes in planning overseas trips for people with very particular needs, says he, too, has noticed that the demand for overseas wedding trips is increasing.

"These account for only a very small portion of our business, but the number of inquiries has increased this year."

In the first half of this year, Lei says, UniqueWay designed seven overseas weddings for Chinese couples: two in Odense, Denmark; two in Queenstown, New Zealand; two in Melbourne, Australia; and one in Okinawa, Japan.

The most popular overseas destinations for weddings among Chinese couples have been islands such as Bali and Mauritius and the Maldives in the Indian Ocean, and Santorini in Greece, Lei says.

Now, Europe, the United States, Australia and New Zealand are becoming more popular, he says.

"Because we specialize in customized overseas travel, more and more wedding-planning companies with overseas weddings to arrange are looking to work with us. However, outside China we don't work with foreign wedding companies. We have our own local resources, such as close connections to local florists, and to the owners of castles, chateaux and the like."

Unlike with wedding planning companies, Lei says, his customers wanting overseas weddings tend to be couples who plan to do the ceremony unaccompanied with relatives or friends, or at the most just their parents and a handful of friends.

An overseas wedding ceremony can be just one element of a couple's longer travel plans, such as a pre-honeymoon holiday, having exotic wedding photos taken and videos filmed for the wedding proper at home, Lei says.

The Ministry of Civil Affairs says that about 13 million couples married last year; 9.8 million married in the first half of this year, equating to an average of a little more than 54,000 marriages every day.

Experts say the Chinese wedding celebrations market is booming, and almost any taste or demand that couples have relating to a ceremony can be satisfied.

Those overseas who work with Lei are very supportive, he says.

"They are casting their eyes over the growing demand in the Chinese wedding business. Some local tourism bureaus have invited us Chinese wedding industry insiders to do research tours to promote what they have."

Domestically, it is not only wedding planning companies that are cashing in on this demand for a taste of the exotic. Travel agencies are beginning to market package holidays with a wedding theme that cater to between two and six people.

However, Pan of Mocha Wedding says these holidays "are not so much a wedding as family travel".

For her company, an overseas wedding typically involves 30 to 80 guests, she says.

Usually the guests will be away for about three days, arriving a day before the ceremony, attending the ceremony and reception the next day, and then taking in a bit of travel the next day before heading home.

The marrying couple arrives several days earlier to make arrangements and may stay two more days for wedding photos and some travel as well, she says.

The cost of a wedding abroad is not necessarily that much more than a wedding in China. It costs between 6,900 ($1,085; 969 euros) and 8,000 yuan for a table of 10 at a wedding banquet in an up-market hotel in Beijing, whereas something comparable overseas can cost less than half that, Pan says.

Pan has built a reputation for herself as an expert in the wedding planning market and has created China's first talk-show program in wedding planning called Yu Yan. She also trains those in the industry.

In Beijing it would cost between 20,000 yuan and 30,000 yuan to rent a lawn for an outdoor wedding attended by 120 people, she says, an expense that would be saved if a wedding was held on many islands overseas.

In addition, the number of guests invited to overseas weddings is necessarily limited, she says, so in general the overall cost will end up being about the same as for a wedding in China.

The costs, generally excluding air fares, of most of the weddings held overseas planned by her company are borne by the groom or his family, she says.

Lei Tao says the prices of overseas wedding ceremonies his company organizes can vary greatly because of how customized they are, and there are no fixed group programs similar to those that traditional travel agencies offer.

A small ceremony in a castle in Denmark over three days can cost 80,000 yuan for a couple alone, while the same thing in Queenstown, New Zealand, will cost 20,000.

For Vivienne Li and her husband, the cost for the 50-guest wedding in Bali was about 500,000 yuan including fees for the local wedding planner, filming, photography, banquets, all guests' accommodation.

That included $450 for the services of a rain stopper.

"Thanks to the rain stopper, performing rituals such as burning incense behind stage, we had a perfect, rain-free wedding," Li says.

dongfangyu@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily European Weekly 09/25/2015 page24)