Culture in the Blender

By globalistgirl, on July 16th, 2009

I am engaged

After some thinking at the beginning of the year, I realized that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with my boyfriend and wanted to stand up and say so. In other words, I decided I wanted to marry him. I cooked up a proposal scheme (had to be flexible, since we live three states apart, and I decided to throw in a candy bribe for good measure), bought a ring in the Nordic tradition, and popped the question. And so now I’m engaged!

This is where the culture mess starts. I should have asked about ring metals. I bought a plain 18k yellow gold band without particularly thinking about it – because the only cultural tradition I know that has men wearing engagement rings also holds that an engagement ring is an 18k gold band. Turns out metal choices are more subject to fashion in the US, and what’s more, yellow gold looks old-fashioned to my fiance. So that was a failure.

Second, after his initial happiness wore off, he freaked out about the fact that I didn’t have an engagement ring. I told him that wasn’t important, but he insisted not only that we not tell anyone until he got me one, but that it be an American engagement ring. (Diamond ring rather than gold band.) I had no idea having a ring for me was so important. Turns out he was right in gauging the response, though – all of his family immediately asked to see the ring.

Now we’re planning a mostly American wedding. This is a home of mine, and getting married is very low-key (although it’s growing in popularity and hoopla) in Sweden. (The invites will likely look bizarre to my family.) However, I refuse to be given away by my father. That is the most ridiculous part of Anglo weddings, and I’m not playing along with that. It’s our third-culture wedding after all. My fiance fell in love with the carriage ride to the ceremony site that’s part of our wedding package, and so it looks like we’re walking up the aisle together in the Nordic tradition as well. Then we’re throwing an afternoon tea reception, which clearly will involve supervising the hotel quite a bit. Their initial menu suggestion included beef wellington and scallops with bacon.

I imagine all of the guests will be surprised at at least one element of the wedding, if not several. I also imagine there will be a lot of explaining required for everyone to feel like they know what’s going on and what it means. First, my parents are hosting the wedding in the American tradition, which will be normal to our American guests but strange to our Swedish guests. (Not sure how that might look to our Chinese guests.) Then there are the ceremony elements, which will likely be alternately familiar and unfamiliar to all guests. And then there’s how to behave at an afternoon tea, and a lack of a garter toss and a bouquet toss, that may surprise American guests. (The garter toss is just tacky, and I’m not throwing a bouquet to any single female guests that don’t have the right to get legally married.) The cake topper (for the American-style wedding cake) is a 囍 (shuāng xǐ, double happiness).

I’m sort of excited to have so many family members and friends share in my third culture wedding! It’ll be a mess – but it will be our mess. And for once, the majority gets to deal with adjusting to other people’s cultures, and my mixing is just fine. I’m very lucky to have found such a special and open-minded guy!