Hi Ladies,

This might already be in another post (couldn't find one though), but wanted to see if anyone is doing a shortened/mini tea ceremony during the actual ceremony with just the parents? My fiance's mom is Cantonese and wants us to do one, we just don't have time during the day before the ceremony, and would prefer not to do it during the reception if we don't have to.

Any advice on having a mini tea ceremony during the ceremony? Or even a shortened version during the reception?

Thanks!

Sparkle060509  did a mini tea ceremony during her ceremony...check her bio or maybe pm her. 

we did a mini tea ceremony within our ceremony.  a formal tea ceremony would include offering tea to everyone, them sharing words of advice and giving you red envelopes, etc, but ours was extremely abbreviated and mainly just for presentation to honor my chinese culture for my parents (DH is korean and it is not customary in his culture).

our officiant introduced it and our string trio played song while we made the tea offering to both sets of parents and to my grandfather only. it probably took 5 mins total.

thank you sparkle! i know you are supposed to kneel, but we obviously cannot during the ceremony - it looks like you just bowed? did your parents hand you red envelopes?

oh no way, we werent about to kneel haha.  but nope, we didnt do the red envelopes.  my mom was all confused when i told her about how we were doing it since you are supposed to, but i explained this is just an abbreviated tea ceremony.  mainly just for presentation to acknowledge our culture within our american style ceremony.

Nelpy did one between her ceremony and reception. After the ceremony, they took 2 hours for pictures, then went back to the hotel for a brief tea ceremony before the start of the reception. They did have a 3h gap between the ceremony and reception, which made this possible. And she made her grand entrance in her chipao (and changed back into her wedding dress later).

oh yeah, jamiesue did a tea ceremony at her hotel right before her ceremony too...

thanks ladies! i'll take a look into nelpy and jamiesue's ceremonies. i'm not sure how much time we'll have before the ceremony, and our ceremony and reception are at the same location (same as sparkle's :)). i think we may opt to just do a 5-min version like sparkle's during the ceremony, but if you guys have any other ideas keep them coming!

sparkle - i love that the tea set matches your overall theme. I didn't even think about the tea set, but now I'm on the search for a pink/gray one!

That's cool! I'll have to take a look at these bios. I am planning on a tea ceremony too and didn't know how long they take. I'll probably do the shortened version of it as well.  Sparkle, what music did you play during the ceremony?