4.3- Wedding preparation - Reason

	Past	Nowadays
Retreat	In the past, the period of retreat lasted for several days since it was regarded as a serious procedure. Also, the distance between the brides’ homes and grooms’ homes were too long. After getting married, it was difficult for brides to visit their parents, relatives and friends. Therefore, brides had several days to express their feelings and laments to everyone, especially senior relatives through singing.	The formation of small family weakening the relationship between relatives and brides since they do not live together and the lack of interaction and communication weaken their relationship. Therefore, brides seldom express their lament to relatives. Furthermore, the distance between places gets closer. It is no longer difficult for brides to visit their parents after getting married, thus there is less sad feeling for the brides. The attitude of the Hong Kong teenagers towards Chinese traditional culture changes a lot; they think that this procedure is unreasonable so they do not follow it. The social status of female rises, many female has jobs. It is impossible for them to leave their jobs for several days and stay at home to do this procedure.
Meeting of brides and grooms in the day before wedding	In the past, grooms and brides did not see the face of each other before wedding day since their marriage is arranged by their parents. It is inacceptable in the past Chinese society that the grooms see the brides before wedding day since it is regarded as violating the rule.	Couples have their freedom to making their mate choice; their partners are chosen by them so they must see the face of each other before wedding day. The rule in the past can not apply in the society nowadays.
Bed installing	All these procedures aimed at providing luck and fortune to the couples. The good luck man and woman were believed that they could bring their luck to the new couples. Chinese believed that allowing children to sleep and get fruits on the bridal bed can let the couples have more babies in the future. Chinese pay lots of attention to fertility of brides so many elements in Chinese traditional wedding are about fertility.	The introduction of western culture makes teenagers nowadays does not believe these kinds of practices. The western education highlights logical thinking and scientific. Teenagers nowadays think that these are not logical and not scientific so they do not believe that. Couples nowadays do not want to have baby because of the financial and personal preference. Raising a child needs millions of money which makes many couples reject to have a baby. Apart from the large amount of money, considerable amount of effort has to be spared in order to raise a healthy child. Many couples do not want to shoulder this burden and they don’t want to produce offspring and they want to enjoy the life of them both only. Some of them are willing to have one child only. Therefore, the idea of fertility is not suitable for them.