The Unordinary Wedding Shoes
What is your response to the item I am introducing today if you read my earlier post? Congrats if you selected “shoes” as your response! Brides usually wear embroidery shoes as their wedding shoes and tend to pass them to the next generation as a gift. You may wonder why shoes are also a Chinese wedding outfit’s highlight. This tale about social status. Together, let’s uncover the significance of the embroidered shoes!
The Embroidery Shoes – The Implication of the Identity
In both modern and traditional Western weddings, brides will wear white high heels as their wedding shoes. The brand of high heels is the only thing that differs. In Chinese culture wedding culture, people usually wear embroidery shoes as their wedding shoes. However, it was not common for women to wear embroidery shoes in the past. Only women from wealthy families can wear it, and there is one criterion behind it.
Historically, embroidery shoes were shaped like little triangles rather than the typical shoe shape. Because they did not have to do housekeeping, only women from affluent families were needed to do foot-binding, and only those women could fit into such shoes. Imagine the sophisticated skill needed to embroider on little shoes. Costly must be the price. Wearing shoes with embroidered, then, is a sign of luxury.
*The most traditional embroidery shoes
However, most women want themselves to look better. Even the women who didn’t do the foot-binding wished to own a pair of embroidery shoes. Fortunately, one of the embroidery shoemakers noticed this point, so he strived to popularize embroidery shoes, allowing all kinds of women to wear them. Additionally, he created various embroidery shoe motifs so that individuals may occasionally wear them. Newborns, deaths, and, of course, weddings were among the themes.
*The comparison between the normal foot and the foot with foot-binding
The Wedding Theme Embroidery Shoes – The Design and Pattern
Generally, there is no specific requirement for wedding shoes in Western weddings. Brides can choose the pointy-toe, round-toe, or square-toe high heels based on their preferences. Yet, all the embroidery shoes must be designed with round-toe, which implies the completeness and satisfaction of the married life. Similar to most wedding-related items, the shoes’ primary color will be red. However, you might also come across certain shoes with gold wedding embroidery. This is due to the desire to match the color tone of some brides’ “Gua Huang” or “Gua Hou” (Qungua types made up of a high density of gold threads).
The wedding shoe pattern is similar to the design embroidered on the Qungua. The only difference is that the patterns must be embroidered in pairs on one shoe. For example, you may see a pair of goldfish, a pair of butterflies, or a pair of Mandarin ducks. Again, the pattern designs are not limited to thread embroidery, and you may find some modern designs that the patterns are made with beads or sequin. Yet, if you see a motif that appeared singly, that must be the wedding version of the Chinese word “Xi,” which means joyfulness and blessing to the bride.
Nonetheless, it is not a “rule” to wear embroidery shoes as wedding shoes. Some brides think it is a bit over or can only wear it once, so they would choose high heels from brands instead. But most of them would still follow the rule of selecting round-toe high heels, as they still value tradition.
*Both wedding shoes have a single pattern, “囍.” “ 囍” is the wedding version of “喜,” which implies doubling the happiness and blessing of the newly married couple.
The Parts of Outfits Contributing by Others
After finishing this post, you’ve known about all the “essential” items of a traditional Chinese wedding outfit. In the next post, I will talk about the items not prepared by the brides but others. If you want to know why and who will be responsible for those parts, follow my next post!