Marriage is the death of hope

Despite Woody Allen's sage advice, marriage forecasters (there's no such thing, but what the hell) predict that there will be at least a 20 percent increase in the number of marriages in Shanghai this year. So many people are intent on tying the knot that hotels and banquet halls (at least the fancy ones) have been booked solid for most of the first half of 2006, with auspicious dates like October 22, 2006 also promising to be busy as well. Couples planning on getting hitched in '06 also need to worry about the person they hire to be the wedding MC. This is a profession that has lured many with its promises of free booze and good pay. So how does quality insurance work in a business like this? Well, in three years' time, at least 90 percent of the official wedding MCs out there will be required to bring their qualifications to work with them. In order to help consumers choose between MCs, they will be categorized by some mysterious criteria into four categories, A through D, so that you can avoid the inexperienced ones or the ones that make lame sex jokes. If you're lucky though, your special day will be MCed by a guy like Hai Do of Nanjing, who has more than one thousand weddings under his belt. Hai Dao was born on, you guessed it -- February 14th -- and has collected one bottle of red wine from each couple he's married since 1997 and had them sign their names on it. He has now over 500 of these, and plans on giving the first batch back to the couples sometime around 2007, just in time for their ten year anniversaries.