3.3- Betrothal - Reason

	Past	Nowadays
Wedding date	·         According to the legend, weddings held in these 3 months would be unfavourable to the groom or the bride ·         Farming was in its slack season and wedding celebrations would not come into conflict with labour demand and food supply.	·         Modernization has resulted in people working in offices rather than farming. Hence, they can choose to marry anytime they want. ·         Attitude of the young generation is changing. In the past whereby the happiness of a marriage many people thought is depend on marrying on an auspicious day. However, better education have made couples realised the success to a happy marriage is communication between the couples, not depend on an auspicious date. Therefore, many couples get married in some special dates, namely  09/09/2009 which means “forever” and “longevity” and 10/10/2010 which means “wonderful”
Arranged marriage	·         In the past, man and woman are not allowed to be together, their contact with opposite sex is kept to minimum so they have lesser chance to know other people. Also, girls are not allowed to go outside so there is low opportunity that girls can meet boys. ·         In the past, China is a Patriarchal society. Father is the most powerful in a family. All members must follow his orders and wills. Therefore, father is the one who initiates the proposal. ·         Social network of the people in the past is not as wide as people nowadays. Each family is only familiar with few families. They rely on matchmakers to introduce and knot marriage.	·         Nowadays, people are well-educated and the chances to know opposite sex increases ·         The social networking devices are well developed nowadays. People can make friends in lots of ways. The widening social network of people nowadays reduces the needs of introduction of opposite sex through matchmakers. ·         The ideology of the society changes because of the introduction of western culture, the contact between opposite sex is no longer regarded as taboo. Everyone has their right to choose their partner and goes dating.  Parents are unable to bother their decision since many teenagers think that marriage is their own business and it does not relate to the knot of two families. ·         Due to the low birth rate in Singapore, the government are encouraging people to marry early.
Betrothal gifts		·         Some of the items are missing or getting harder to find. For example virtuous poultry usually need to be alive, but in Singapore, we did not have live poultry. And in Hong Kong, due to H1N1, live poultry is getting  harder to find ·         Mindsets of the people are changing. Even though some stuffs are still available but it may require more time and effort to look for it, for the convenience sake, people will just make do with it. ·         Some western elements are more popular than Chinese one, such as cake. Therefore, the Chinese ones are replaced.