By staff reporter LU RUCAI

Marrieds-to-be search Nanjing Park for an unoccupied spot in which to take their wedding pics.	An underwater wedding.	The bride, radiant in her wedding gown and 40-meter-long train.

The Lunar year of the dog augurs auspiciousness and wealth. Consequently many courting couples have decided to tie the knot in 2006. Whether or not this year it lives up to their expectations remains to be seen. But as far as wedding-related commerce is concerned, 2006 will most definitely be one of unprecedented prosperity. The China Association of Social Workers predicts that more than 120,000 couples will marry in 2006 in Beijing, and that an average RMB 30,000 will be spent on each wedding. There is also a rising demand for wedding specialists in China’s other big cities. In Shanghai, for example, more than 120,000 couples plan to marry this year, and are expected to spend more than RMB 20 billion.

The 10 million or so couples that marry each year in China spend RMB 250 billion on the wedding-related expenses of photos, car hire and the all-important wedding banquet. To save time, many busy urban soon-to-be-weds employ specialized companies to ensure that this most significant day in their lives goes smoothly. This has resulted in a burgeoning of photographic studios, catering companies and travel agencies, not to mention jewelers and dress makers whose profits derive largely from weddings. In an Internet survey taken by the Organizing Committee of the China International Wedding Expo between November 2004 and February 2005 it was found that 88 percent of 60,000 newly wed couples had their wedding photos taken at a studio, 49 percent employed wedding companies to organize their wedding ceremonies, 79 percent held their wedding banquets at restaurants rather than at the bridegroom’s house, 37 percent bought, rather than hired, a bridal gown, and 68 percent booked a honeymoon holiday.

Matrimonial Business Brisk

Haidai, 27, and her fiancé are one of the 10 million couples that plan to marry this year. Neither is superstitious, but both have acceded to their respective parents’ wishes that they marry during the dog year of good fortune and prosperity. Haidai has already begun shopping around the companies that organize wedding ceremonies, offer the services of a professional master of ceremonies, do bridal makeup and hair styling and make a video record of the whole event. All the companies she has contacted have so far given her a similar response: that due to the week-long May Day holiday’s being fully booked, neither a wedding limousine nor master of ceremonies is available before June.

Supply is surprisingly short of demand in the Chinese capital’s wedding industry. “There are fewer than 300 registered wedding-related companies in Beijing, yet more than 600 institutions provide licenses for the provision of wedding services,” according to Secretary General Shi Kangning of the Wedding Committee of China Association of Social Workers, yet: “ … only 30 or so companies offer year-round specialized wedding service, and there are fewer than 20 with a high reputation and a large business scale.” In 2005, about 30 percent of the 90,000 couples employed companies to help arrange their weddings, the majority of which were held during the three weeklong holidays of May (Labor Day), October (National Day), and the late January to Mid February Spring Festival.

The Rising Cost of Matrimony

Couples that have decided to plight their troth in the year of the dog may be counting on its purported auspiciousness if only to recover their outlay. Those that choose the Beijing Kangning Wedding Consultancy Company can expect to shell out RMB 20,000 for their nuptials. As a wedding master of ceremonies’ fee is anything from RMB 600 to 3,000, a hair and cosmetics package is generally around RMB 1,000, and the six-hour hire of a stretch limo costs around RMB 8,800, wedding companies stand to make a hefty profit on each assignment. High prices, however, have not scared away young brides- and grooms-to-be. The Kangning Wedding Consultancy Company, one of Beijing’s largest in the field, is always booked to capacity. In 2005, just one table at a banquet arranged by the company cost around RMB 1,000 -- a price that has since doubled. This year, the charge at a well-known establishment such as the Beijing Quanjude Roast Duck Restaurant would be in the region of RMB 3,000 to 5,000 for each of the five tables that normally comprise a wedding banquet.

How, one might ask, do young couples afford such extravagance? Among the couples surveyed by the Organizing Committee of the China International Wedding Expo, 70 percent had a combined monthly income of less than RMB 5,000 and 26 percent earned RMB 5,000 to 8,000. The remaining 4 percent had a monthly salary in excess of RMB 8,000. A random survey by this reporter on a portion of these couples revealed that the majority relied on financial input from their parents for the wedding of their choice. As most parents consider their children’s wedding to be of paramount importance, they are generally more than willing to offer at least a generous contribution to it and often foot the whole bill.

Grand wedding banquets are also popular in the Chinese countryside. Many parents start earmarking matrimonial funds, particularly those of their sons, before their children have even reached school age, and impoverished families think nothing of getting in debt in order to buy betrothal gifts, household necessities, and pay for the ceremony itself.

Wedding Trends

The current Chinese preference is for Western-style wedding garments in an otherwise conventionally Chinese arrangement. Westerners that live in China, on the other hand, opt for the tradition of the bride, dressed in traditional red silk dress, delivered in a sedan chair.

Faddish matrimonial modes such as wild blue yonder weddings, when marriage vows are made aloft in a hot-air balloon, underwater frogsuit weddings and ceremonies held in the desert have recently come into vogue. As they are even more expensive than the standard wedding package, they are more popular among unconventionally, well-heeled couples.

As the demand for wedding-related businesses grows, more people are getting in on the act. There are now specialized training courses on wedding planning, photography and catering. “The Chinese wedding market has great development potential,” says Professor Wang Qiyan of the Economics Department of the People’s University, continuing: “The tradition of big wedding celebrations is fuel to China’s ongoing economic boom, as wedding consumption is a national pursuit.”

There are, however, a select few that prefer this grand occasion in their lives to be a simple affair, when relatives and a few good friends gather for a simple dinner before seeing the happy couple off on their honeymoon. They are generally members of the young intelligentsia. But for the broad masses, the fancier, frillier and more festive, the better. And if it helps to keep China’s economy on the up, why on earth play down such a momentous occasion?