过大礼 on 六月初十六

What is 过大礼?

How my mama explain to my little cousin in simplified terms.....
Groom will come and order the bride so as to book her for the wedding day. Haha

It should be.......
In Chinese culture, an auspicious date is selected to Ti Qin (literally meaning "propose marriage"), where both families will meet to discuss the amount of the bride price demanded, among other things. A couple of weeks before the actual wedding, the ritual of Guo Da Li (literally meaning "performing the rites") takes place (on an auspicious date of course). The groom and a matchmaker will visit the bride's family bearing gifts like wedding cakes, sweetmeats and jewelry as well as the bride price.

Just because our actual wedding is on 八月初五 (only a few days after the seventh month ends), we have to arrange for our 过大礼 to be before seventh month for auspicious reason. Wanted a simplified version but in the end, we bot so many things @ Chinatown. Being a ribbon-lover, i tied all those stuffs with ribbons and paste "Xi" on all of them.

We will get from groom side:
1. pin jing
2. small ang pao as "nappy money" for my mum's effort in bringing me up
3. oranges (even number)
4. cakes
5. two bottles of hard liquor

From the bride's side:
1. Return a partial amount of pin jing
2. Take an even number of oranges out and return the rest
3. Give an angpao for your hubby to buy pants
4. Two bottles of orange juice in return of the hard liquor

From clockwise: lamps, Tam pui with those red dates - 多子多孙, bowls and chopsticks to use when consume tang yuan, face basin with toothpaste and toothbrush, sewing kit to signify that i will be a xian qi liang mu, yan zi - big and small "yuan"

Here's the cakes which i ordered from Choz - looks yummy =)

My two godsisters bought me this as my wedding gift, so sweet of them.... Both of them are still schooling and have to fork out their own savings to buy me this - must be a big hole in their pocket. Hehe