A Uyghur Wedding Story

Note: this is a story from my notes of a hetero wedding that took place a couple years ago. I wanted to publish it to compare and contrast with the wedding story I posted a few days ago.  

E and I are late—running down the street flailing as we carry our bags in one hand. When we arrive at the wedding hall, A, whose younger sister is getting married today, leads us into a random stranger’s two-room house next to the wedding hall to change. Earlier that morning, E and I had gotten off the plane in the city of Aksu (Xinjiang is huge and there are airports in every major city with flights to Urumqi) and then driven the two and a half hours to A’s village. We hadn’t changed into our wedding guest attire yet. The stranger male resident of the house, who I had assumed was a family friend but later found out was just a random person who A had asked to let us change in his house, retreats into the back room and closes the door. We change into our dresses and crowd next to a tiny mirror to apply our make-up. 15-minutes later we are done, and A leads us into the wedding hall.

It’s a little after noon and the hall is packed full of women with faces caked in make-up and eyes bulging with eyeliner and false eyelashes, dressed in sparkly glittered and sequined dresses. The tables are packed with food being served family style on large dishes on a lazy susan in the middle of the table—cold noodles with vinegar, meat-stuffed buns, corn on the cob, and lamb pot roast. We are invited to sit, and E and I scarf down rice pilaf with lamb and carrots and steamed squash, two of the most common traditional Uyghur dishes. A girl across the table takes a picture of me without asking while I’m eating and just giggles when I call her out on it. A girl arrives with a notebook, taking our obligatory cash wedding gift of 200 yuan and marking down our names and dollar contribution in the notebook. A gives E and I our wedding favor, a piece of Atlas silk, a traditional Uyghur design.

The bride is dressed in a white traditional Western wedding dress with an Atlas top that covers her shoulders. She is sitting next to the groom at a long rectangular table with their closest friends in the back left of the room, the bride looking down at her hands folded in her lap, unsmiling with her face covered in a veil. The veil is see-through enough that you can see the contours of her face and can see she is not smiling. The bride is supposed to sit unsmiling for this first part of the ceremony, as she is to express sorrow on this day where she is leaving her birth mother and family.   

The noon ceremony is primarily for the bride’s mother and her friends, and close family and relatives (we are here on special invitation because E has been invited to sing and she’s asked me to tag along). As soon as a slow Uyghur song comes on, the dance floor—a small space in front of a tiny stage in the middle of the room—is soon filled with middle-aged women waltzing with each other. The next song is a Uyghur song, and the women change to traditional Uyghur dance, which involves slowly walking and twirling in a circular formation around the dance floor as you wave your hands around. E invites me to dance with her and we join the small crowd moving our arms and feet to the music. People walk around handing out free scarves, placing them around our necks as we dance, as a wedding favor and token of appreciation for dancing well. The few men in attendance, mostly the groom’s friends, don’t join in on dancing, this is mostly for the bride’s mother’s friends.  

About 1 hour later, the noon ceremony wraps up with the symbolic passing on of the daughter to the groom’s family. With Uyghur music blasting in the background, the bride is invited to step onto the dance floor upon which the mother pulls her veil back and reveals her face. 

The bride and groom dance their first dance together in the traditional Uyghur style, the bride still looking serious and unsmiling, while we stand in a circle surrounding them and clapping to the beat. I wonder how she can dance in those high heels. Then, it is time for the bridal party to leave and this is the symbolic parting of mother and daughter. As the mother passes her daughters hands off to the groom’s, mother and daughter weep openly. Not out of happiness, but out of sadness that the daughter is leaving this family and entering a new one. “It is expected that the daughter look very sad and she must cry with real tears. Otherwise, it is looked down on as very shameful of the daughter not to be sad to leave her mother,” E explains in my ear as I look on with horror as the bride weeps on what is, in our Western vision, supposed to be the “happiest day of her life.”

E and I leave with the bridal party and we go up to the second floor where we sit with the bridal party (but not the boys or the groom), dance, take pictures, chat, and eat more food. Eventually the boys come, knocking on the door and forcing it open, taking the bride away like it is done in traditional Chinese weddings. We leave the restaurant with music blasting from amplifiers that a couple of the guys are carrying, and we get in cars and go to another location. It’s evening now, and we eat another big dinner at a smaller club in a basement. I’m so tired I try to get out of it by saying that I’m feeling sick, but they insist that I stay anyway. This one is the reception for the younguns, as they explain to me, where the bride finally breaks out into wide smiles and laughter, and the men and women dance together while the men secretly drink alcohol on one side of the room.