Cheongsam

Posted Sunday, September 30, 2007 11:29 PM

As a little girl, my brother (one of my brothers was but twinkle in my dad's eye) and I would rotate to accompany a parent to attend Chinese wedding banquets.  I remember sitting in my seat, starving, anxiously waiting for food to be brought out as this usually happened around 7pm.  When the glorious moment arrived, I would dig in and then drink in my surroundings.

The bride would be dressed in a traditional Western white or ivory wedding gown, looking wonderfully stylish, beautiful, and happy.  At some point, she would discreetly leave and come back dressed in a traditional Chinese/Asian brocade dress, usually high-necked and sleeveless.  Well, at least I thought it was a discreet departure.  For all I know, she might have caused a great commotion but I wouldn't have noticed bacause I'd be engrossed by the food :P I didn't really know why she changed into another outfit, but it did look pretty.  These outfits are usually pretty form-fitting, ha!  I wonder if it's the groom's insurance that the bride doesn't stuff herself silly and start packing on the pounds!  Just kidding.

Towards the end of the night, the bride would change once again, this time into a fun party dress.  Cute dress to dance in and an excuse to go shopping, how can you argue against that?

So at this point, I have my Western wedding gown, something I thought would take lots of time to think about and decide on.  But no, it was surprisingly easy and straightforward.  It turns out that I won't have to go shopping for my cheongsam because Alfred has conveniently done that a few years ago on a family trip to China.  Let me elaborate :) 

By the way, I learned from Alfred (who learned from his mom) that "cheongsam" literally translates into "long clothes", hahaha.  I thought that was so funny!  Don't you picture long PJs instead of a slighly scandalous dress??

Ok, Alfred's trip to China.  So a few years ago, I was invited to go to China with Alfred and his family for Christmas vacation during my junior (senior?) year in college.  I didn't want them to shell out money for my ticket and I knew that my parents wanted me home over the long break, so I declined their very generous offer.  Being the good bf that he is, he brought me back some presents! One was a set of handcarved wax seal "stamps", you know, for those occasions when you need a wax seal on your correspondance.  He also got me 3 cheongsam, one in white with gold thread, one in blue and one in burgundy, both of those with gold, red, and green threading.  They were all so gorgeous, but unfortunately, the sizes were all off.  To his credit, he did ask for "XS", but these "XS" dresses were all different sizes!  The white one didn't even fit; it was more like a large.  The burgundy was a bit loose but still wearable.  The blue one fit perfectly.

I've worn the blue and burgundy dresses to band formals and some Chinese New Year family getogethers, so they have been put to good use.  Sadly since gradutation, I've lost about 10 pounds and these dresses no longer fit too well! This I found out when my mom suggested that I wear one of them for the banquet and I tried them on.  After much chiding from my mom about being "too skinny" (sue me, I exercise now), my mom said with assurance that she'd be able to alter one of them to fit.  We both agreed that the burgundy one would do the job nicely.

Since then, I've gone home once to visit and try on the dress and it looks great :)  So my mom just needs to make some small adjustments in the bust area and I'll have outfit #2 squared away.