Jo Cup Reader Tiffany Weger I always wanted to have two weddings. “I’m Chinese-Malaysian-American and I grew up in Queens, New York, with just my mom,” she told us. “My father and family are in Malaysia. I always loved coming back to visit because I have many aunts, uncles and cousins; my mother has nine siblings!” Tiffany knew that it would not be possible for her many relatives to make the 10,000-mile trip from Kuala Lumpur to New York. But it was important to her and her now husband, Ben, that both families be part of their wedding. The only solution? Take two.
You might remember Tiffany from her post-proposal donut photo. Now she takes us through both of their beautiful wedding days…
“Ben and I met on a dating app, at the height of the pandemic. I was living with my mom in Queens, and he was in the Bronx, and we went on 10 Zoom dates over the course of two months. He wore a suit for the first one, which I thought was really funny. After the vaccines were rolled out, we finally met in person, and two years later, we got engaged.”
“We had our first wedding in 2024, at a restaurant in Brooklyn called rule of thirds. My dad came from Malaysia. Ben is Jewish, so we wanted to incorporate the traditions his family loves. Ben broke the glass and we had a beautiful challah that his father cut after the ceremony. We also signed a ketubah, a Jewish marriage contract, which we drafted together. Now we have it hanging above our bed.”
“Hosting a tea ceremony is a big Chinese custom at weddings, to honor elders. There is a very specific order and it can take a while. We just didn’t realize as a long time, so it was very quiet and at one point Ben’s little nephew burst out: ‘When will this end?’ which was really fun.”
“After the tea ceremony, the bride and groom are supposed to give red envelopes with money to their younger siblings, something none of us have. So Ben gave envelopes to his niece and nephew, and I gave one to my little cousin, who is like a sister to me.”
“We found this simple arch on Facebook Marketplace and then decorated it ourselves. We hung Ben’s grandfather’s tallit (prayer shawl) over it, because Ben’s grandparents are no longer alive. It was really meaningful to have them there with us like this.”
“There is a famous Chinese version of the Cranberries song, Dreamsby Faye Wong. I love both versions, but that’s the one I grew up with. When Ben and I started dating, we made each other playlists and he put that cover on his. We chose it as our recession song. The DJ played it well while we were kissing: it looked like fireworks.”
“I think the hour was my favorite part. It was so exciting. Our moms were screaming like crazy, but they had so much fun, everyone did.”
SECOND
A year later, Ben and Tiffany flew to Kuala Lumpur to celebrate their second wedding…
“In Malaysia, before doing anything else, my mom and I had to go to a Buddhist temple and talk to a priest, so he could give us auspicious dates for the event. We gave him our names, our birthdays, and our birth times, and he gave us the date of June 14. My whole family pitched in to help: one of my aunts welcomed us into her home and organized the welcome dinner, and another aunt hemmed my dress and found Ben his wedding clothes. When I think about everything What they did for us, it makes me cry.”
“Ben and I wore traditional wedding clothes for the first part of the day: a ma kua for him and a kuá for me. They are a little complicated to put on, but they are very pretty and intricate. The general idea is “more is more.” You want to do it up – gold all.”
“There’s a tradition called ‘gatecrashing,’ where the groom and his groomsmen (and the best man in our case) come to pick up the bride, and the bridesmaids put them through a series of challenging games to ‘win’ her. Like eating wasabi-filled rice balls or doing Chinese calligraphy. And if they don’t complete a task, they have to pay the bridesmaids (literally!).”
“You’re supposed to be a little nasty about it, too. I told my American friends, ‘Just follow my cousins. You see, they’ll do it.’ demand money.’ It’s a real performance. The groomsmen will say, ‘Oh, we’re out of cash!’ and the bridesmaids are like, ‘No problem, we’ll take Venmo! We accept USD! Pay!'”
“One of the assignments was this really complicated yoga pose. Keep in mind, it was 95 degrees outside. I was upstairs in an air-conditioned room, watching on FaceTime.”
“Finally, the groom comes to proclaim his love to the bride through the closed door. I assumed Ben was going to just say the English version of standard Chinese writing, but he surprised me by writing his own personal speech and getting one of my relatives to help him translate it into a dialect my family speaks, called Hakka. I was surprised and very emotional, because it’s not an easy language to learn. Everyone was applauding and I burst into sobs.”
“After the attack, we prayed in the shrine of my aunt’s house and then had the tea ceremony. The one in Brooklyn had seemed long at the time, but it was actually quite short in comparison. We served tea to all my older aunts, uncles and cousins, and gave red envelopes to all the younger ones.”
“The final part of the ceremony is the bride leaving her childhood home to join her husband’s. We did the goodbye part, for tradition’s sake. My mom put me in the car and started crying like I was really leaving, even though in reality, my cousin was just giving us a ride around the block. I was like, ‘Mom, I’ll see you in five minutes!'”
“The second half of the day is the wedding banquet. We had it at a beautiful local restaurant. Chinese weddings are all about the food. There’s really no dancing or toasting like in the United States. It’s a big eight-course meal, and all you want is for everyone to have fun.”
“This is almost all my cousins Believe it or not, I have more!
“Couples don’t usually give a big speech, but I wanted to take the opportunity to tell my family how much this meant to me. Being a third culture kid, I always felt a little out of place. My mom and I are the only ones in our family who don’t live in Malaysia, so not only did they embrace my husband with open arms, but also being so involved, so excited to do this for us, it gave me a sense of belonging. I can’t wait until Ben and I come back with our own kids and give it to them too.”
Thank you very much, Tiffany and Ben. we wish you so much happiness.
PS: More wedding stories, including a slippered City Hall wedding and hilarious wedding day blunders.
(Brooklyn wedding photos by Carissa Joy. Malaysia wedding photos by Jeremy Moments.)
