Guo Da Li ceremony: 12 版帖

His aunt bought the item below for our Guo Da Li ceremony and it immediately caught our attention, mainly due to its size.

Both of us have never heard of this before and we had to google to find out its use. Turns out that it's called the十二版帖 (there are 12 sections, hence the name). In the olden days, the groom would present it to the bride's parents to invite them to attend the wedding banquet. It comes with certain standard phrases and all one has to do is to fill in details such as the names of the groom's and bride's parents, banquet venue and date and so on. An invitation like this besides the regular invites given out to friends is needed as the usual invites already contain the parents' names - the logic is that parents therefore can't 'invite themselves' to the wedding based on those.

I believe this custom of handing out the 十二版帖 is becoming uncommon these days as couples choose to simplify their wedding and traditions get lost with the passage of time. We, however, are glad that we've had the opportunity to be exposed to such an interesting tradition.

I followed this link to fill in the details - I hope I did it correctly! 😉😃