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Marriage and wedding ceremony
In feudal society,
the marriage was the whole show by parents or matchmaker,
when someone is at the age of marriage; she or he will
be matched by matchmaker according to their fortune and
eight-character about her or his birth. When they are
ready to marry, the bridegroom will present betrothals
and ark for courtship by matchmaker, after the bride agrees
with that, she will select a propitious date and write
down in red paper and this called Selecting Date.

About local folk,
generally speaking, courtship and selecting date will
arrange on April of Chinese lunar calendar and wedding
ceremony will start on December of Chinese lunar calendar.
The second betrothals will be more than the first time
to the bride. How much of the bride¡¯s dowry will base
on her economy. In poor family, there are a closestool,
three basins, two candle¡¯s holds and a lamp, in a word,
that is three lamps. There are two most recherche dowers,
one is closestool, which fills up dates, peanuts, oranges,
that means the newlywed will get a baby earlier, another
is shoes, someone will put bride¡¯s shoes into groom¡¯s
one, that means living to old age in conjugal bliss, because
shoes has a partial tone in Chinese. The day before the
wedding ceremony, the bride will host family relatives
for parting with her parents. The groom will also host
his relatives, at the same time, the groom will invite
two elderships of family to company him and bride. On
the day of wedding ceremony, the bride¡¯s sedan chair will
land in Jing¡¯ai Hall, the cortege will bring the bride
to her chamber and halloo that one generation is better
than the coming one on wedding ceremony. The bride and
the groom drink their wine mutually, the elder will sing
congratulation. Three days after wedding ceremony, the
bride and the groom will go back to father-in-law¡¯s home
and present heavy gifts, the bride has to come back new
home in the same day, and she couldn¡¯t stay in former
residence in the first month. In ancient time, man was
exalted, but on the contrary, female was quite humble.
So when they married the groom¡¯s family was pretty busy
and the bride¡¯s family was quite cold.
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