A week ago a friend's daughter was planning a wedding. The invitation card came with a small butter cake. It is customary for the prospective groom's family to furnish with a certain number of boxes of pastry for the bride's family to distribute. In my time, my parents only informed close relatives. I took the easy way out, I invited only my ultimate boss and my maid of honor to my dinner reception. Everybody else was invited to my church ceremony and lunch reception.
If I do not remember wrongly, I think my parents only asked for twelve boxes of the "marry off the daughter" biscuits. A small pink box contained two pieces of flaky pastry, one of them containing lotus seed (like moon cake) filling that seemed yellow and the other with bean filling which is black.Now I can't quite recall which one had pink pastry and which had yellow pastry. Both pastry was sweet in taste symbolizing the sweetness in the coming marriage.
All my in-state relatives received each one visit from my parents, bearing individually the invitation card and the box of pastry. Any out of state relatives and those in Singapore received each a long distance call bearing glad tidings.
After I was married, I remember some juniors of mine distributed pieces of well decorated sponge cake neatly placed in boxes. And I thought times have changed. Now that my children have reached marriageable age, I see another possible way of announcing a marriage by giving a small cake.
Perhaps by the time my youngest bring home her prince charming, she may indeed invite all her friends by on-line invitation and reservation as she intimated. Me being a dinosaur, I probably would limit my guest list to an absolute minimum, I plan to mail out my cards and replace the visits by phone calls.
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