Wedding Gift Taboos: Common Customs and Safe Choices

Before you give a gift, it helps to know which items are commonly said to be unsuitable. This page goes through the customs most often cited at Hong Kong weddings and the reason each one is cited, then sets out the choices that carry no such baggage and how to wrap, time and card the gift. These are conventions, not rules anyone has laid down.

Cited customs, not rules

Most of the taboos that circulate at Hong Kong weddings come from wordplay and association rather than any written code. What they actually do is prompt the giver: at this particular occasion, certain objects carry an extra layer of meaning when they are handed over. Treat the list as a checklist and there is nothing to worry about.

What genuinely needs your own judgement is three things: who you are, who they are, and where the gift falls in the whole sequence. The same object, given by two different people, can land in two quite different ways.

Seven commonly cited items and the reason behind each

• Clocks: the word for clock sounds the same as the word for an ending, so giving one is described as giving someone their last rites. Wall clocks and alarm clocks are the ones usually meant.
• Sharp objects: knives and scissors are read as cutting or severing, and cutting carries its own association with separation.
• White flowers: white is the main colour at funerals, so a gift built around white flowers gets read as connected to mourning.
• Green hats: the phrase for an unfaithful spouse is built on green, so the association travels with the colour. It is a saying rather than a rule of the occasion, but everyone reading it lands in the same place.
• The number 4: it sounds the same as the word for death, so numbers, floor levels and table numbers containing a 4 tend to be avoided.
• Second-hand items: passing on something another person has already used is read as sending away something old, which takes the value and the thought out of it even when the object itself is perfectly fine.
• Shoes: shoes are for walking, so giving them gets described as leading the couple away; the word for shoes also sounds the same as the word for evil, a reading cited alongside.

Four of the seven rest on a single swapped word or phrase (clock and ending, four and death, shoes and evil, and the green hat above). The other three come from colour, from the shape and use of the object, and from the act of handing on something used. Sorting them into those groups makes the list easier to act on.

Choices that carry no such baggage

The safest category is anything tied directly to the couple’s own document. A MyO! certificate holder is the clearest example: the cover is stamped with their own names and their wedding date, and what it keeps is the few sheets of paper they collected themselves rather than an ornament that has nothing to do with them.

That category also clears most of the list at once. It is not something another person has used, it is not sharp, it carries no wordplay, and it does not read as passing on something old. The specification itself - 2 colours, 6 designs, an A4 interior and two stamp fields - is set out in the full marriage certificate guide.

A red envelope is the least controversial form of all, and the one most people actually hand over; how much to put in depends on how close you are, whether you are attending the banquet, and whether you are pooling with others. See the Hong Kong wedding gift budget for how that number is worked out.

How to present it: wrapping, timing and the card

Wrapping: keep away from pure white or pure black wrapping paper, avoid green as the main colour, and do not tie a knife or similar object to the package. Beige and blue carry no reading of that kind.

Timing: the gift can be handed over on the day or sent ahead; what matters is not leaving the couple one more thing to deal with on the day. If the ceremony and the registration fall on different dates, work back from the earlier one. Custom orders take about 7-14 business days, counted from the point the design proof is confirmed.

The card: write the couple’s names and their wedding date. Whoever opens it can see at once which couple the gift belongs to, and years later can see who sent it. The names and date on the cover and the names and date on the card are the same details, so the two sides line up.

The other side of the exchange

A wedding involves two exchanges, not one: what you give the couple, and what the couple gives back to their guests. The amounts and the forms work differently - one is a sum of money set against the relationship, the other is a physical object set against attendance - and planning them separately is much clearer than merging them into one budget. None of the customs above apply to the return gifts themselves; they are a separate occasion with their own logic.

A last check before ordering

• What it is: that the gift connects to the couple’s own document rather than being a decorative item that has nothing to do with them.
• Wordplay: that nothing on the wrapping or the card lands on one of the words above.
• Time: that the 7-14 business day lead time plus transit is worked back from whichever of the ceremony or registration comes first.

To check a design or a colour, or how the names and date will lay out on the combination you have in mind, use the enquiry button that stays with you on the page to start.