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Not new but still worth a look. Celia Hatton of CBS looks at the thousands of dollars that some Chinese couples are blowing on elaborate photo shoots before the big day itself. more ›

This could be a scene right out of a mass wedding conducted by the Moonies, but it is actually part of the centennial celebrations of Beijing's prestigious Tsinghua University. Over 400 couples, among them the faculty members and graduates of the university, took part in the two-day mass wedding that began on Friday. more ›

From dbmboise:

Weddings are big business here in China, and Shanghai is no exception. It's common to see couples having their photos taken in various parks around the city, but here in Danling Lingshi park, you can see the couples in what can only be described as a production line. Each couple has it's own entourage consisting of at a minimum a photographer, his assistant and a hair a makeup girl. Some groups have large numbers of staff to pamper the couple and their family who usually pay upwards of 2000 rmb for a days shoot and 50-100 images. more ›

It looks like royal wedding fever hit this Nanjing couple hard. In honor of that most magical of days approaching, we bring you photos of absurdity-laden nuptials almost as shamelessly overblown as the real thing will likely be this Friday (tiny cameras embedded in altar flowers, mobile apps, two billion viewers, EVERY MOMENT IS PRECIOUS!) This couple rented out horses, a "royal guard", and a carriage, processioning around town waving and terrifying their horses with the obligatory fireworks. I'm not really up on my colors, crests, and kilts, but it seems to me there are more than a few conflicting costumes in the mix... more ›

It sure looks like guerilla tactics are becoming the favoured weapon of choice for gay activists around China (see here and here). Inspired by the Qianmen wedding that took place in Beijing in 2009, a gay couple and a lesbian couple recently hit the streets of Wuhan and got "married" for the world to see. more ›

Shanghaiist's good friend and colleague, Rebecca Kanthor, a journalist who moved from New York to Shanghai eight years ago, recently got married with Liu Jian, a man from Dong'an in Henan Province. Their traditional Chinese wedding was a riot of colours -- the groom had to ride around on a horse while the bride was carried around town by four men announcing the marriage. Catch all the action on Reuters' slideshow of the amazing party here. Have pictures of your own big fat Chinese wedding to share with the world? Send them to us at info(@)shanghaist(.)com. more ›

As someone once said, “Sex is like snow, you never know how many inches you're going to get or how long it will last”. So while our snow ended kinda prematurely yesterday, we can only look on with envy at the many many inches everyone else is getting (we're looking at you, Harbin!). For a start, check out this mass wedding in Harbin that will totally give the Moonies a run for their money! Catch the lone (relatively underdressed) midget without a bride at 0:24 (everybody say awwwwww!) more ›

Photos by Jeremy Breningstall. more ›

• Recession be damned! Shanghai shoppers spent more than 1.2 billion yuan over the past 3 days of the holiday weekend. This represents a 23.6% increase over last year. It seems none of us were able to resist the lure of deals, promotions, and other bargains that chased us around over the holiday. [Shanghai Daily]
• Although it might be a mess at the moment, some of that construction on the Bund is finally panning out - the new Pennisula Shanghai hotel is scheduled to open by mid-October. The hotel with combine Art Deco architecture characteristic of the area with modern luxuries. [Urbanatomy]
• Walking down the street with all of the traffic noise from the cars, buses, mopeds, old women yelling, and bicycles always manages to give us a headache. Shanghai is trying to clamp down on its bus drivers who are honking excessively by installing "horn-monitoring" devices that fine drivers if they are honking in a non-emergency situation. Although part of us is relieved to hear there will less noise, the other part now worries about getting hit by a bus even more. [Shanghai Daily]

So we've sat on this piece of news over the weekend and we're still not sure what to think about it. Is it super awesome that a Chinese wedding couple decided to attach a 2.16km long train to the back of a wedding gown, complete with 9,999 silk roses, in an attempt to challenge the current world record holding wedding dress (1.58km)... or is it just super tacky? Zhao Peng and Lin Rong got married in eastern Jilin province, and it took their 200 wedding guests three hours to unroll the fabric of Lin Rong's dress. After the ceremony, he cut the dress down to 1,984.1022m to represent his bride's date of birth and then added 608 crystals to represent each day they dated. The whole dress cost about 40,000RMB - probably equivalent to the annual salary of his schoolteacher bride. Source: BBC more ›

Do you know of a marriage that failed after the couple became expats? Karen Mazurkewich, who previously worked in Hong Kong for the Wall Street Journal, is seeking interviews over the next few weeks about how the unique aspects of living and working abroad could spell ruin for the wedded. more ›

The music in this video shot in rural Henan totally gave us a headache. Steven Lim of Youku Buzz couldn't quite make out whether this was a wedding or a funeral. Well, yeah, as we told you before, things can get pretty noisy and wild at Chinese funerals, with sexy strippers and paper condoms and what have you. Someone needs to fly these girls down to Shanghai and bring them to The Shelter. We're sure it'd be a RIOT. more ›

Shanghai Daily tells us that around 30 members of the Shanghai Matchmaking Trade Association (yes, there is such an organization), have signed an agreement promising to be honest to their customers. If information provided by these agencies turn out to be false, or if their service isn't satisfying, customers will get a refund. The trade association also said they will inspect these companies once a year to make sure they live up to their standards. more ›

A couple whose wedding photo album came with the characters "no freedom, no future" printed on it has sued the photo studio. According to China Daily, the studio explained their actions by saying that the words "were merely pointing out that some freedoms are lost with marriage and meant no ill will to the marriage". After mediation, the photo studio agreed to pay RMB12,500 to the couple. more ›

This set of powerful pictures were shot during a wedding photo shoot in Pengzhou, Sichuan when the earthquake struck. All survived the disaster but it looked like one old and very beautiful looking building was badly damaged by the tremors. Click here to view larger pictures if you find the photo effects too annoying. [h/t to China Digital Times] more ›

Photo by captainvideo taken from the Shanghaiist Contribute page. To see your photos on our Contribute page, use Flickr and tag your photos “shanghaiist”. Or you can email your photos to photos@shanghaiist.com and they will automatically appear on our site. more ›

Shanghaiist used to have this pink dream (fenhongse de meng or 粉红色的梦) about weddings. They should be happy, joyful, unbelievably romantic days with lots of kisses and flowers. (Hey, a girl can dream!) But now to harsh reality: This wedding in Kunming (news in Chinese) two weeks ago is one of the worst we could imagine. more ›

• Hybrid cars should hit Shanghai by the end of the year. Meanwhile, about 360,000 cars in Shanghai have received the "green" seal of approval.
• Weddings are up in the Year of the Dog. But what caught our attention was this: "For weddings with 200 guests, the current price is 18,000 yuan (US$2,236), which is 15 percent above last year."
• It is now officially illegal to discriminate against AIDS sufferers in China.

• Photos of three very different Chinese weddings.
• Bowing to pressure from competitors, eBay China is waiving transaction fees on its site. "Each market is different...Chinese people are very price-sensitive, perhaps more than any other market," an eBay spokesperson said.
• The Year of the Dog could lead to lots of abandoned puppies. Adopt if you can! (It's worth it.)

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. more ›

Chien-Chi Chang has the distinction of being not only a member of Magnum Photos, widely considered the most prestigious photo agency in the world, but also of being the only the only full member of Chinese ancestry (Chang is from Taiwan, a citizen of the US). more ›