DIY wedding tea pot and cups

For our traditional wedding tea ceremony coming up, I’ve been finding it hard to find suitable Chinese wedding tea pots and cups. Most are very red and overly decorated, and definitely ones that I would never use again. Anyone else with this problem?

For my sister’s wedding, I managed to find simple flower tea cups from Taiwan but they didn’t have the double happiness sign which I thought was more meaningful and relevant.

And as the mantra of most DIY projects goes: If you can’t find it (or afford it), MAKE IT!

This was a relatively quick transformation as I wanted to keep things simple. All that was needed: a plain set of tea cups and teapot, some Chinese double happiness stickers, and gold gilding liquid for an extra touch. The stickers are easily removable to use as a regular tea set in the future.

Stick on double happiness stickers for a DIY chinese wedding tea cup and pot set | micheleng.com

To my readers who aren’t too familiar with the traditional Chinese wedding tea ceremony, it is a ceremony to introduce and recognize the bride as part of the groom’s family and vice versa and to show respect to bride’s and groom’s elders. These elders include parents, aunts, uncles, grandparents, older siblings and cousins, and the list goes on.

Red date tea is usually served to signify fertility in the marriage. The couple kneels while serving the elders seated on a chair (usually seated as couples).  After the tea, the elders give the bride and groom a red packet in return.

I’m definitely not an expert in Chinese wedding culture, but this is a brief overview and generally what I’ve known so far. Feel free to add on and share if you know more! ;)

To make the Chinese wedding tea pots and cups:

… 

Read More »

Discover Chinese design talent at BUNDSHOP!

It’s always such a joy to discover collections of treasures online and when I found out about the opening of BUNDSHOP, it totally made my day!

There have been so many stories about the challenges of manufacturing in China, but few people ever talk about Chinese design talent! In recent years, there have been individual big names like Chinese couturier Guo Pei (whose work I absolutely adore) that have been making international waves. But Chinese design on a whole perhaps hasn’t carved as strong an identity as say, Swedish design. It seems that way at least, although I may be wrong :)

BUNDSHOP brings together the coolest products from fashion and industrial designers from Mainland and Greater China and makes them available for purchase across the globe. But beyond that, it tells the story of these designers and how each brand and product came into being. That’s truly my favorite part – learning about the stories behind each product.

As a designer, it’s often a struggle to get a product made to perfection. Whether it’s quality control issues, technical difficulties, meeting minimums, the list of problems sometimes seems to go on forever. So it’s always very encouraging and inspiring to see other designers overcome these sometimes insurmountable problems to bring a gorgeous piece of design into the world.

And if you don’t believe me when I say gorgeous, check out some of these products:

Shanghai breeze fan by Carl Liu at BUNDSHOP … 

Read More »