Combining two cultures

My OH is Chinese. The invitations are in red and gold (lucky colours in Chinese culture) and feature the traditional "double happiness" symbol, and we're changing into traditional clothes in the evening. My cheongsam will be decorated with a phoenix and dragon, which are lucky symbols for a Chinese wedding. We're also going to be buying our cakes from a Chinese bakery, so they'll have typically elaborate decoration and one of them will probably have a red bean filling.

I'm also Dutch (but with a Chinese heritage) so we're having an English/Chinese wedding! I have a random for you though... Are you changing your surname? I've contacted the Dutch consulate and they've told me that I cannot change it (unless I go to the Dutch Court)... I was just going to change it on my bank account and other documents but not the passport. Do you know what you are going to do yet?

@MadamRed: That sounds amazing! So cool that you get to wear two wedding dresses!

@MissExcited: How funny, hoi! I also just read up on that and was surprised about how it works! As I understand the default name change after marriage means that you will always be addressed with your married name on any correspondence from the government, but legally you still keep your own name. That means you will indeed keep your own name on your passport, but they add 'wife of ... ' behind it, so it will still serve as proof that you are married. It seems you can't really do much about it unless as you say you legally change your name in court, which is apparently not what people generally do and probably will cost you lots of money. But given that I didn't even know this and always thought all the married people around me had 'properly' taken their husband's name, I guess it doesn't matter much! All your letters will have your married name, and people will call you by that name, so I suppose you wouldn't notice much of a difference from having it changed legally.

Any of you girls having the ceremony in multiple languages, or just English? My family all understand English perfectly fine but I'm thinking I'd like to maybe say part of my vows in Dutch or something. And the bigger issue is speeches... can't really see my dad giving a whole speech in English!

I am German, my OH is originally from England but has lived in Scotland for 19 years now, and we are getting married in Scotland (where we live).

I am not too sure yet whether we will be including German things into the wedding. I was considering having one layer of the cake be Black Forest and we were also considering ordering cakes from a German Konditor (cake maker) in the town where we are getting married, but I'm worried it'll all be too much (cake).

There are a lot of German wedding traditions I am not a fan of so I'm not too keen on including them anyway.

@ the Dutch ladies: I can change my last name but it's a bit more complicated as well because I live abroad. In Germany your name change would not need any extra paperwork, but when you get married abroad you have to do a married name declaration, so it'll probably be 2-3 months after the wedding before I actually have a passport in my married name.

All our guests speak and understand English. I am considering having a reading in German for the ceremony, but I'm not sure yet. We are having a very small wedding, and I don't know whether my OH's family might feel a bit odd not understanding it.

@FutureMrsMarshall I'm glad you've read up on it as I found it very confusing. I feel better now knowing I can take my fiancé's name . In terms of using different languages, I was thinking of making a speech in Chinese for my relatives who can't speak English and then say some words in English too. All the ceremony will be in English. Good luck

I am English and my OH is French, we both speak French/English and quite a lot of our friends are billingual Fr/Eng too. But my family don't speak French and his don't speak English so we will be trying to incorportate some French into the ceremony in the readings, and giving out an order of service in French so they can follow the ceremony. We aren't incorporating many French traditions into the ceremony as my OH isn't traditional and every idea I have had to combine the two he has shot down! All we have done is made our Save The Dates and Invites billingual so we have combined both there

My wife is Latvian, I'm Chinese and we had a mainly English wedding so that was in effect three cultures to try & merge.

So we picked a few traditions from each to uphold. My wife made sure we did the traditional Chinese door games where the bridesmaids basically torture the grooms party with tasks you probably see on "I'm a celebrity". My brother in law was the fake bride common in Eastern European weddings. We also had the Chinese tea ceremony & the Latvian lighting of the three candles to signify two families becoming one.

A lot of guests told us it was really nice to see traditions from other cultures.