Here come the brides

One of our new favorite destinations is Lizhi Gong Yuan. This park is about 1 hour by express bus from Shekou. It reminds me most of New York's Central Park, except it is much, much smaller. There is a small lake on which you can paddle boat, there is a kids' area that includes a carousel, there's an area where people can play chess or mah jong....a lot like Central Park, but smaller.
This park is a popular location for Wedding Albums. Have you heard of the phenomena of the Chinese Wedding Portraits? This is a huge industry here. Sometime near the day of your actual wedding (sometimes before, sometimes after), the bride and groom get dressed up in wedding gear (usually a poofy white dress and a white tuxedo) and spend a day sitting for portraits. Sometimes there are costume changes, and sometimes you might actually see someone's wedding portrait in traditional Chinese wedding clothes. Think Glamour Shots does your wedding.
Friday night we had dinner with Randy's assistant and she said she had her wedding pictures done in Lizhi Gong Yuan. I asked her if she wore a white dress for her wedding, and she laughed and said, of course not. She wore a traditional Chinese dress for her wedding in the Temple. She thought it was pretty funny that not only in the US is it not common to do a costumed production number for our own wedding albums, the pictures are usually taken the day of the wedding, or at least a majority of them. I told her that wedding albums in the US usually contain pictures of your whole family at the wedding, too. She thought that was odd.
So, on any half-decent (no rain) day, you will see walking through Lizhi Gong Yuan, dozens of couples dressed for a wedding that doesn't ever happen. At least not the way their pictures show it.

I love this one because the bride Myles is walking toward is wearing a track suit under her dress.

Yeah, their shoes will not be in the pictures.