Hi everyone, we really need some help on which language to use for our wedding/if we should do bilingual wedding ceremony.
So a bit background for ourselves - we grew up in China and came to States since college. We are comfortable speaking both languages. Our wedding is pretty small with only around 60-65 people. Most of the guests can understand both English and Chinese, but our parents are not that good at English (can understand the basic conversations but not too much in terms of wedding ceremony). We have around 10 guests who cannot understand Chinese at all, and they are our friends/coworkers who we have known pretty long and won't be mad if we have a Chinese speaking ceremony.
Our officiant is my cousin, who can speak comfortably in both languages. We actually are lawfully wedded last September with a city hall "wedding", but we haven't told too many people, and we will still say our vows, etc. in this upcoming wedding. The wedding is not a religious one either.
So now seems like we have 3 options, but we can't decide which one we should go with. They all seem to have some pros and cons.
1. Only speak Chinese:
pro:
- our parents can understand everything
con:
- few friends cannot understand anything
- videographer cannot understand anything
solution:
- our videographer is super nice and agree we can come to their studio and help them marking sections for editing the video
2. Only speak English:
pro:
- everyone except for our parents can understand
con:
- our parents won't be able to understand too much
solution:
- we can let our cousin sit by them and translate for them. we can also write down our ceremony program/our vows in Chinese for them
3. Speak both languages (one part in English first and then again in Chinese)
pro:
- everyone can understand!
con:
- it would make the ceremony longer. But given that it's not religious/we don't have special program, it shouldn't be that much of a issue
- it would be a bit weird to have the same thing spoke twice? Also we don't know in that case how we should do our vows?
Your thought would be super helpful!!
