Getting Married in Hong Kong - from mafia to lucky days
Getting married is a nice thing. At least the thought of such. Most people make jokes about how terrible is to be married, but thats another topic. Essentially, getting married is a legal act, involving a public office and signatures. When you do it at home, you might have to prepare all kinds of documents to prove that you exist, that you are not already married and that you don't owe money to the government maybe. Doing it in Hong Kong seems to be much easier. All you need is both your passports, a couple of minutes to give notice of the wedding and a couple more to get married between 2 weeks and 3 months after that. Thats at least what they tell you....
Of course everything seems easy, as described on the
homepage of
the HK office. Just stop by to give notice and then come pack later for
the actual act. But nothing is as easy as it seems. The main issue
here is superstition. Since Chinese people believe in lucky and
unlucky numbers, all becomes much more difficult. Western people
think 13 and 7, maybe 666 are unlucky (or sometimes even lucky)
numbers, but Chinese people have a meaning for _all_ numbers, and
even more for their combinations. Since some numbers represent
adjectives (2 = fast) and some nouns (4 = death), you can make small
sentences with numbers (24 = fast death). That is why every day,
month and year can have a different luck-rating for a good wedding.
And 2006 for example, is VERY lucky. I don't know how long Chinese
people postpone their weddings to be in a lucky year, but this year
the situation is terrible.
Since anyone, locals and
foreigners alike can get married in Hong Kong, many people form China
and other countries around the region think its a good and
prestigious thing to get married here, and of course they want a
lucky day. So instead of simply going to give notice, you have to
think about getting an appointment first to give notice. There are two
ways:
If you know more than 3 months earlier when you want to
get married (and to whom), and you know about all the trouble ahead, you should opt for registering on line for an appointment. This can be done at the on line communications
platform
of the government in Hong Kong. Otherwise, this is how it works:
Show up at the government office (such as Central, near Pacific Place mal).l
Look for a sign that shows the number of possible appointments for a specific day near the entrance. Choose one that has more than 50 places free. The others are already given out to on line registration holders.
Come that day again to the office. Take that day off from work. Come before 6:00 in the morning. There will be a line of people waiting, namely some with tattoos from the local triad organization, trying to make some money from you. It sounds bad but its not that terrible. Basically they will ask about 20 USD from you to give you their place in the line. They have probably been there since 4:00 am, so its not that much if you consider overtime pay and working hours, right? Anyhow, if there are less people in the queue than appointments available, you just get to the end of the queue. As long as you get an appointment that day, being in the front of the queue or the end does not make that much of a difference
Wait until 8:00. They will be opening the door to the office, ask you for your two passwords to write down the names.
Then they will lead you into the cellar staircase (no kidding) where they have posted numbers on the wall. Go until the first free number and stand below it. Remember the number.
After all people from the queue are standing at a number, and those willing to fight for one are kicked out (several policemen stand by), you can leave to get breakfast. I recommend the muffins on the opposite site of the street (pass through the bridge in Pacific place). Now find a bench in the mall to sit down, since all stairs and halls are prohibited, a guard is standing by also.
Come back at 8:30 and stand below your number again, on the stairs, in the cellar. After everyone is there, the queue will go up the stairs until everyone got into the actual office and gets a red paper with the same number as on the stairs, your name & passport is checked against the list in the morning.
You get a real chair (!) to wait on until the whole queue is processed for the first time. What they do is simply give you an appointment time and a number finally to give notice, sometime during the day. Around 9:30-10:00 this is done and you can try and do something meaningful for the day until your appointment is due. They also tell you which pages of your passport and your HK ID Card or else they need copies of.
You come back sometime in the afternoon at the time with the number, your copies. You wait about 1 hour. Then there will be a number on the wall showing yours. Do not rely that the numbers increase at all or in normal order. They might jump 5 digits or stand on one for 45 minutes.
Once you get called (they say it in English in case you are not-native, they noted that in the morning), you go the the counter they name (they have 13A instead of 14 for example) and you have to sign 1-2 papers and answer a few simple questions, such as how to pronounce your name or why you did not bring a document you did not know about just to tell you later that its not needed. You also get to pick the day and time for the actual marriage registration.
After 30 minutes of documents, you go back and wait, about 30 minutes more. Then you go to another counter and give a kind of oath that you have given correct information. ("please stand up and read the text on this paper aloud...")
Around 17:00 you might be finished.
Good luck.
