Love, a many-yuan thing
By Shi Yingying (China Daily)
Updated: 2010-03-10 09:57
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'Naked marriages' not for everyone
Getting rid of those cockamamie ceremonies, expensive banquets and "unnecessary" resource wastes, the eco-friendly bare marriage is the choice of a small group of urbanites.
"It's our wish to have a plain wedding. In our opinion, it is a personal issue instead of a social gathering," says 30-year-old Zhang Wen, a magazine founder in Shanghai, of his wife. "It appears to me that the conventional wedding is a kind of externalism."
The so-called bare marriage or "naked marriage" refers to holding one's wedding without ceremony, a photo shoot, honeymoon and sometimes, even no wedding ring, house and car. The cost of the cheapest bare marriage is just 9 yuan and the fee goes to the marriage registration office of the department of civil affairs.
For Zhang and his wife, the process of getting married simplified to a dinner with friends and family in an ordinary restaurant, which cost him hundreds of yuan.
The monthly salaries of the couple, at the beginning of last year when they got married, were more than 20,000 yuan.
"Bare marriage is worth encouraging, because the basic idea behind an economical wedding involves no waste of resources," says Zhou Xiaozheng, a sociology professor at People's University of China.
Though this is an increasingly acceptable position, many parents of the post-80s generation who are marrying would prefer a conventional wedding.
"I wouldn't accept it if my daughter came to me and told me, 'I registered my marriage'. After all, I raised you to a 20-something adult and that's it?" says one woman surnamed Jin, helping her daughter arrange her marriage.
The traditional Chinese value of "saving face" is also a concern for Jin.
"The relatives would find it strange (if we don't hold the ceremony, banquet and don't invite them), they will think 'what's wrong with your family'," she says.
Another group of parents oppose the "naked marriage" for different reasons.
"I didn't have a grand wedding when I got married due to poor conditions of our time, and I always feel like it's a wish unfulfilled," says 49-year-old housewife Yang Hong. "I'd love to hold a luxury wedding for my kids if we were financially able to do so."
For these occasional differences between those getting married and their parents, Fu Dan University sociology professor Hu Shoujun says the best way forward is compromise.
"Why can't we combine the views of both sides? Getting married is a good thing at the end of the day," Hu says.
"Also we should remember, it's all about personal choice, those who choose bare marriage shouldn't criticize those who prefer grand marriages and those in favor of big weddings should keep quiet about 'naked marriages'."
Lu Junting contributed to the story