Various traditional wedding presents, wedding pastries, firecrackers, incense, longgan, four-color candies, gold ornaments, wedding bands…
Photo: Zhong Renjie

All of the major media outlets in Taiwan were saying that September 9th of Year 99 of the Republic of China was going to be an auspicious day to get married, and quite a few people decided to do just that, to take advantage of that lucky “9999” sequence of numbers. The whole “marriage industry” was in overdrive. On the subject of “marriage”, on the eve of the centenary of the Republic, one could see many traces of old traditions, and many hints of changes to come.

Leaving aside those terrified of marriage, in itself “marriage” is a troublesome thing that many people do not want to face, with the pressures of proposing, fixing the date, selecting the right wedding pastries, buying the gold ornaments, printing invitations, arranging the ceremony, decorating the bridal chamber, escorting the bride, planning the banquet, etc. etc. And added to the old traditions that still have a strong influence, there is the powerful influence of “new customs” for the 21st Century: taking wedding photographs, finding a bridal secretary, spending the honeymoon overseas, and so on. And besides this, in order to get the full effect of an emotional, tear-jerking “I do”, the male friends will even plan a heart-wrenching proposal, replete with music, wedding bands, heaps of flowers, candlelight, and some kind of hidden surprise.

Because of all this trouble, a lot of young unmarried couples do not want to get married, not for emotional or family reasons, but simply because of the expense of time and energy in planning for something that has no real bearing on love at all.

The biggest impact of the arrival of the digital age on marriage ceremonies has been in the making a lasting record of it. Thirty years ago when my parents got married, they went to a photo studio. Members of both families gathered by the door for a group photo, and in the picture they are sitting stock-still and upright, everyone wearing smiles. If I rummage through all of the old photos from that era, two of these constitute the only photographic record that remains (of course there are memories, and the official wedding certification photos.) As I was only born two years later, I had no personal experience of it, and I could ask the people who were participants about all the details of it. But all that is really left are these two yellowing photographs.

Thanks to the spread in popularity in digital cameras, the way people document their weddings today is completely different. Now, every guest has a camera, and every detail of the entire process, even down to the arrangements and decorations of the banquet, can be recorded on small easy-to-use cameras. When the newlyweds arrive on the red carpet, the cameras flash one after another, and every step, every facial expression, and every dress is captured, from every angle.

With the ease of photography and convenient sharing on the Internet, there might be a dozen or more photo albums posted online with many thousands of pictures, with the wedding ceremony recorded from many viewpoints. With the reliability and accuracy of this kind of recording, what a difference there is from the weddings of thirty years ago. Besides photography, there is even digital filmmaking , and today’s digital cameras now have filmmaking function Digital video cameras or cameras that record to hard disks are not difficult to obtain e, and with some post-production editing tools, it is not hard to see why marriage ceremony videos are more and more common.

Digitizing the traditional way of documenting the marriage ceremony: filming using a digital camera Photo: Zhong Ren-jie

In one traditional wedding ritual, the bride, wearing the ring, must step onto a small round stool from a high chair, an act symbolizing harmony and good social relations. Photo: Zhong Ren-jie

With the development of printing technology, the printing of wedding invitations has been thoroughly transformed by digital technology. A Google search of “wedding invitations” or “invitation cards” turns up hundreds and thousands of wedding invite templates, and these templates mostly come from the websites of printing companies. Traditional wedding invitations have gold lettering on a red background (leaving aside the ancient tradition of invites that have brush-written calligraphy). In the most courteous language, the bride and groom invite the guests to participate in the wedding banquet; there is no photograph, and besides the big red envelope, there is nothing that distinctive about it. Now, with the development of online marketing, a printing company can print all kinds of fancy wedding invitation templates ahead of time, because printing in large quantities lowers the unit cost for each invitation. Internet marketing provides an outlet for the large quantities of printed wedding invitations. After selecting a template, the customer can go on to specify other information such as a name, time, and place to be indicated on a card, an “insert” into a fancy invitation. Just as one once had to go to a tailor shop to get one’s measurements taken, now there are many stores selling ready-to-wear clothing, and more styles than ever before waiting to be chosen on-line so you are sure to be able to find one to suit you.

Even custom-made wedding invitations, can be significantly different to those in the past. Image processing software such as Photoshop has become more prevalent, and it is no longer difficult to decide between having a professional do design work, or to do it oneself. Some people do not even use paper copies of invitations, but send the final version to the guests electronically by using Facebook, email or other Internet media. The Internet makes it easy to contact your guests, but there is another great thing about it, too: with paper invites, there is no sure way of ensuring guests will confirm they are coming or not, but with invites sent via the internet, you can easily get a direct response from your guest. Digital wedding invitations are not only more convenient that traditional ones, but their functionality is more robust as well. Of course there are drawbacks to this extreme convenience of duplication and transmission. Invitations that are in paper form, because of their limited print run, can limit the total number of attendees, but digital invitations can spread out of control by word of mouth, and make it difficult to control the number of wedding “guests”.

Many tangible things cannot be digitalized, such as wedding pastries, which require them to be real so they can be eaten, and precious jewel worn for the wedding probably cannot be “virtual”. And may of the “events” that need to happen cannot be digitalized either, such as the wedding ceremony itself, or rituals involving escorting the bride. (But who knows whether in the future one will be able to virtually attend the ceremony by some kind of means of virtual projection?) What we can see now is that the appearance of digital information in the process of the wedding is becoming more frequent. The music that the guests hear when they enter the banquet and sit to eat are probably MP3; the guests may see the wedding photos digitally projected in a loop. And many newlywed couples will collect their childhood pictures, scan them into digital files, and project them with a musical accompaniment, edited into a short “growing up” movie describing their development. More conscientious couples will even make short digital films displaying their gratitude to their parents, and show them at the banquet. With this omnipresent digital information, the weddings of today, compared with those of thirty years ago, are certainly richer and more moving, thanks to these things. A wedding banquet today will resemble a show, in which the wedding guests will not lack for stimulation of the eyes and ears, nor even their palates—and this show is guaranteed to not be boring. But at the same time, these rich and moving wedding ceremonies are extremely complex and difficult. Because each stage of the ceremony represents a business opportunity for somebody, the expenses alone can be shocking. Digitization may look easy, but the investment in equipment and technical training are a must, and not a few “professionals” have come into existence from this fact.

The wedding banquet may be a traditional custom, but much of the venue’s floral arrangements and gorgeous decoration are in the western style. Photo: Zhong Ren-jie

A new era brings new customs with it, and also aims to transform the old. Couples who are trying to satisfy all of the things expected of them, but who may find themselves with insufficient money and energy will always feel that they have not done enough. Both the courage to break with tradition and making the effort to communicate with family and friends have nothing to do with digitization. Many young couples want to dispense with formalities, and convince their parents to have the ceremony and the banquet in one place, substituting the various rituals with a simple civil ceremony, thus greatly reducing the waste of time and money. Still others simply download a marriage contract from the Internet, sign it and take it to the local government office to get registered, a process that takes half an hour. They are legally married, and they can find the time later to celebrate with friends and family, and everyone is happy.

If the traditional marriage ceremony now has a new packaging, the most traditional “wedding banquet” also has a feeling of rebirth. On the other hand, one wonders whether the relatively new tradition of the “wedding dress photo”, in an age when digital photography is becoming more and more widespread, will not also be superseded. It is hard to say what the wedding ceremony will look like thirty years from now, but one thing is for sure: digitized information will continue to change and become richer!