in the great scheme of asian families, mine is pretty acculturated. we speak english at home, we have lots of friends that aren’t asian, we usually eat out at non-asian restaurants, etc. etc. etc. but this wedding, more than anything else, is showing me that deep down, at the core of our beings, we are still very much chinese.
nowhere is this more evident than in our guest list. everyone says that this is the most stressful part of the wedding planning process, but i posit that this is especially so when you are part of a half-asian, half-not wedding.
allow me to illustrate.
for chinese people: a wedding is a communal celebration. we’re a collectivist people, and everything tends to be centered around the community. this is all the more true for large life events like weddings; the entire community gathers to celebrate. (think my big fat greek wedding, only with asian people.)
for white people: this is not the case. (or at least it is much less so.)
consequently, the “badizzo” side of the guest list is significantly longer than the “fantasticmrfox” side, and this is exacerbated by the fact that my family is exceptionally social. by my estimation, my parents are the 3rd most popular taiwanese couple in the metro detroit area. at the very least, they’re in the top 5. and i’ve gone through many different phases — high school, church, college, grad school — and i make friends fairly easily and tend to keep in touch with the ones i make. so our family’s social-butterfly-tendencies greatly magnify this issue.
as a corollary:
for chinese people: people in your community often assume that they’re invited to large events like weddings, when perhaps they in fact are not. however, you can’t tell them that they aren’t invited, b/c this is a serious offense. so if someone says something along the lines of “i’ll be there!”, you cannot tell them that they will not be. you just nod and email your daughter telling her that they’re coming.
for white people: this is not the case.
i was reminded of this today, when my mother informed me that one of her friends — self-invited — is now being accompanied to the wedding by her daughter, who i haven’t seen in 20 years. more on this in a moment.
for chinese people: you tend to know exactly who’s coming long before the invitations are even sent. for example, my mother knew months ago exactly which of her friends and relatives were coming, save for the few who recently invited themselves. i’m not sure why this is — maybe it’s so the hosts don’t get offended if a guest says no; the guest has time to explain him- or herself. but as a result, you have a very good gauge of how you’re doing on your head count early on in the process.
for white people: this is not the case.
ergo, we have no idea who among robert’s relatives and family friends are coming. which means that i have to sit in a very uncomfortable place of… uncertainty. this is not a place i like to begin with, and my anxiety is greatly heightened by the fact that i had to pause sending out invitations to my friends, people i love dearly, because we don’t know who from his family is coming yet, and we cannot proceed without a head count lest we go over. and this is further exacerbated by sporadic emails and phone calls from my mother telling me that more people are coming who were not on the list she and my dad sent me months ago, people who i generally don’t know and who i do not want to bump my own friends in favor of.
all that to say that i am highly anxious at the moment. i want robert’s family and friends to tell us if they’re coming or not, and i want my mother to stop telling me that more people have invited themselves, so i can stop worrying about our head count and resume the business of inviting friends.
in sum, guest lists are hairy for everyone, but when you have two cultures and two sets of social mores to balance… things get infinitely trickier.