Chinese wedding customs, influenced by the long history and tradition, are of distinctive charm. But the western wedding customs are different from Chinese wedding customs in terms of the styles and of the essential native features, as the geographical environment, history, religion and other factors are so different. 

Under the circumstance of globalization, traditional Chinese wedding customs are confronted with the challenge from western wedding customs. Many young people are willing to hold their weddings in a western fashion or in a mixed fashion. This phenomenon arouses the interest of many scholars. They begin to make comparative studies of the Chinese and western wedding customs. In the year 2008, Professor Pan Jinwen elaborated on the cultural differences by studying the differences of the wedding banquet, dressing and wedding procedures. In the year 2009, Xi Xiao in her paper, made a comparison between “Chinese wedding customs and western customs from the angle of clothing, color, wedding banquet and the expense of holding a wedding.”(Xi Xiao, 2008: 226) By analyzing the above aspects, she drew a conclusion of the different values of Chinese people and western people. But her paper lacked a detailed comparison between the differences between the values of Chinese people and the values of western people. In the year 2012, Li Lili published a paper. Her paper’s attention was focused on the influence of different religions on wedding customs. It analyzed the differences reflected from the wedding customs mainly from the following three aspects: “love and marriage concepts, man’s status and woman’s status in a marriage, and the aesthetic attitude.”(Li Lili, 2012: 34) Foreign scholars are also interested in the differences of wedding customs in different cultures. For example, Dodd Collins, an expert in cross-cultural communication, regarded cross-cultural marriage as a breakthrough in cross-cultural communication and he had given a more systematic and persuasive exploration. He interpreted “the relation exists in cross-cultural marriage and culture-related phenomena.”(Collins, 2004: 227)

It is necessary to learn about the differences between Chinese wedding customs and western wedding customs. This thesis explores the differences of Chinese and western wedding procedures and tries to provide a reasonable explanation for these differences. It aims to advocate people to keep an objective and open-minded attitude toward cultural conflict and integration. 

2. The Process of Wedding源'自:吹冰`!论~文'网www.chuibin.com

The process of wedding is quite complicated in both the eastern and the western countries. Before the wedding day, there are many things that should be prepared well. The biggest differences in preparing for the wedding between China and western countries is the way of making a proposal, at the same time, there are many differences in wedding dress and wedding media. In the wedding day, wedding ceremony in china and western countries is also quiet different, as well as the wedding banquet. The differences also appear in activities celebrating the wedding. The paper will show these differences in detail.

2.1 Pre-wedding

Before wedding, proposal, marriage media and wedding clothing are of comparative significance to study. In China, it is the matchmaker who makes the proposal to the bride-to-be. While in western countries, it is the bridegroom-to-be who makes the proposal. As for the marriage media, in China, the matchmaker usually plays this role. But in western countries, the priest is the marriage media. In terms of wedding dress, as we all know, a Chinese traditional wedding dress is totally different from a western one.