Tiffany and Ben’s Joyful Weddings in Brooklyn and Kuala Lumpur
Cup of Jo reader Tiffany Weger-Wong always wanted to have two weddings. “I’m Malaysian Chinese American, and grew up in Queens, New York, where my mom still lives,” she told us. “My dad and extended family are in Malaysia. I always loved going back to visit, because I have so many aunties, uncles, and cousins — my mom has nine siblings!” Tiffany knew it wouldn’t be possible for her many relatives to make the 10,000-mile trip from Kuala Lumpur to New York. But it was important to her, and her now-husband Ben, that both their families be a part of their wedding. The only solution? Have two.
You might remember Tiffany from her post-proposal donut photo. Now, she takes us through both of her beautiful wedding days…
“Ben and I met on a dating app, at the height of the pandemic. I was living with my mom in Queens, and he was in the Bronx, and we went on 10 Zoom dates over the course of two months. He wore a suit for the first one, which I thought was hilarious. After the vaccines rolled out, we finally met in person, and two years later, we got engaged.”
“We had our first wedding in 2024, at a restaurant in Brooklyn called Rule Of Thirds. My dad came from Malaysia, with a few relatives who were able to make the trip. Ben is Jewish, so we wanted to incorporate the traditions his family loves. Ben smashed the glass, and we had a beautiful challah that his stepfather cut after the ceremony. We also signed a ketubah, a Jewish marriage contract, which we composed together. We now have it hanging above our bed.”
“Hosting a tea ceremony is a big Chinese wedding custom, to honor your elders. There’s a very specific order to it, and it can take a while. We didn’t realize just how long, so it got very quiet, and at one point, Ben’s little nephew burst out, ‘When is it gonna be over?’ which was really funny.”
“After the tea ceremony, the bride and groom are supposed to give red envelopes with money to their younger siblings — which neither of us has. So, Ben gave envelopes to his niece and nephew, and I gave one to my younger cousin, who’s like a sister to me.”
“We found this plain arch on Facebook Marketplace, then decorated it ourselves. We hung Ben’s grandfather’s tallit (prayer shawl) over it, because Ben’s grandparents are no longer alive. It felt really meaningful to have them up there with us in this way.”
“There’s a famous Chinese cover of the Cranberries song, Dreams, by Faye Wong. I love both versions, but that’s the one I grew up with. When Ben and I first started dating, we made each other playlists, and he put that cover on his! We chose it as our recessional song. The DJ played it right as we kissed — it felt like fireworks.”
“I think the hora was my favorite part. It was just so exciting. Our moms were both screaming their heads off, but they had so much fun — everyone did.”
**
PART TWO**
One year later, Ben and Tiffany flew to Kuala Lumpur, for wedding number two…
“In Malaysia, before doing anything else, my mom and I had to go to a Buddhist temple and talk to a priest, so he could give us auspicious dates for the event. We gave him our names, our birthdays, and our times of birth, and he gave us the date of June 14th. My whole family pitched to help — one of my aunts hosted us at her house and threw the welcome dinner, and another aunt hemmed my dress and found Ben his wedding clothes. When I think of everything they did for us, it makes me cry.”
“Ben and I wore traditional wedding clothes for the first part of the day — a ma kua for him and a kua for me. They’re a bit complicated to put on, but they’re so beautiful and intricate. The whole idea is ‘more is more.’ You want to do it up — gold everything.”
“There’s a tradition called ‘gatecrashing,’ where the groom and his groomsmen (and groomswoman, in our case) come to pick up the bride, and the bridesmaids put them through a series of challenging games in order to ‘win’ her. Like eating rice balls full of wasabi or doing Chinese calligraphy. And if they don’t complete a task, they have to pay the bridesmaids (literally!).”
“You’re supposed to be kind of obnoxious about it, too. I told my American friends, ‘Just follow my cousins. You’ll see — they will demand money.’ It’s a real performance. The groomsmen will be like, ‘Oh, we’re out of cash!’ and the bridesmaids go, ‘No problem, we take Venmo! We take USD! Pay up!’”
“One of the tasks was this really complicated yoga pose. Keep in mind, it was 95 degrees outside. I was upstairs in an air-conditioned bedroom, watching on FaceTime.”
“Finally, the groom comes to proclaim his love to the bride through the closed door. I assumed Ben was going to just say the English version of the standard Chinese script, but he surprised me by writing his own personal speech, and getting one of my relatives to help him translate it into a dialect that my family speaks, called Hakka. I was shocked, and so touched, because it’s not an easy language to learn. Everyone was cheering, and I just burst into sobs.”
“After the gatecrashing, we prayed at the shrine in my aunt’s home, and then had the tea ceremony. The Brooklyn one had seemed long at the time, but it was actually quite short by comparison. We served tea to all my aunts, uncles, and older cousins, and gave red envelopes to all the younger ones.”
“The final piece of ceremony is the bride leaving her childhood home to join her husband’s. We did the send-off part, for the sake of tradition. My mom put me in the car and started crying as though I was actually leaving — even though in reality, my cousin was just driving us around the block. I was like, ‘Mom, I’ll see you in five minutes!’”
“The second half of the day is the wedding banquet. We had it at a beautiful local restaurant. Chinese weddings are all about the food. You don’t really have dancing and toasts like you do in America. It’s a big, eight-course meal, and you just want everyone to enjoy themselves.”
“This is almost all of my cousins. Believe it or not, I have more!”
“Couples don’t usually give a big speech, but I wanted to take the chance to tell my family how much this meant to me. Being a third-culture kid, I always felt a little out of place. My mom and I are the only ones in our family who don’t live in Malaysia, and so to have them not only embrace my husband with open arms, but also to be so involved — so excited to do this for us — gave me a sense of belonging. I can’t wait until Ben and I come back with our own children and give that to them, too.”
Thank you so much, Tiffany and Ben. We wish you so much happiness.
P.S. More wedding stories, including a City Hall wedding with sneakers and hilarious wedding-day bloopers.
(Brooklyn wedding photos by Carissa Joy. Malaysia wedding photos by Moments by Jeremy.)
Comments
75 commentsAw, they look so happy. <3 Congratulations, Tiffany and Ben, and thank you for sharing the joy with us! I love how they followed traditions from both cultures.
Gorgeous dress! You created two very thoughtful occasions – what lucky guests! Best wishes!
Beautiful! The joy and love that bounce off my screen, wow, thank you for sharing. And the image of mama with tears in her eyes at the “send-off” got to me.
Congratulations, Tiffany and Ben! Loved the colorful pictures and reading about their joyous celebrations.
What a gorgeous and love-filled wedding. I love seeing couples make traditions their own and meld their beautiful cultures together. Congrats to the happy couple!
Tiffany, how Ben is looking at you while you are giving the speech…that says it all!
Gorgeous, thank you for sharing your joy.
What an absolutely lovely story – thank you for sharing.
Coolest wedding feature ever!!! Congratulations to yall!!
This was so beautiful! Tiffany you have the most gorgeous joy-filled smile! Thanks for sharing this CoJ.
ugh love this post so much. so joyful! AND- those off the shoulder dresses! UGH! so beautiful and sassy and elegant and sexy. she is radiant!
I read this with the linked song playing and it is a perfect fit for the absolute joy that pours out of these photos!
Hey Tiffany! Congrats on your beautiful weddings! You are such a fantastic couple and it brought tears to my eyes that your families and friends were so supportive and welcoming! And you were so thoughtful about letting everyone know how meaningful everything was to YOU. Your mama raised you right! From one third culture kid raised in Queens to another, I can tell you that going back to the mother country with your kids and showing them that side of your family and how you grew is overwhelming in the best possible way! This is my favorite post ever on Cup of Jo! Congrats again!
Ah, I’m so glad to hear that you had a great time showing your kids your mother country! When I brought Ben back to Malaysia for the first time a few years ago, it was so fun to see the country through his eyes. Can’t wait to do the same with my kids!
OMG, so beautiful, and so much joy. I love these rituals! They allow our families (and friends!) to really show up and show how much they love us. Tiffany and Ben, you seem like such a fun couple! Mazel Tov! Please come back and show us pics of those babies you talked about having. xo
I remember that sweet doughnut pic. :) Tiffany, you look so gorgeous and joy – filled in every photo! Mazel tov to you & Ben!
So much joy!!
This is the kind of story I should start my day with (if I allow myself social media in the morning). Thank you for sharing this beautiful wedding story. The photos are bursting with joy and love! Wishing Tiffany and Ben an abundance of happiness (and babies)!
So beautiful and joyful! Happy for you, stranger haha.
This gave me goosebumps! So beautiful and loving. Didn’t hurt that I played the cover of Dreams they love while I read down the article. <3 Also, shouts to June 14th (my birthday!) as an auspicious day for love! :)
Hi, y’all, Tiffany the Bride here! Just wanted to let you know that Ben and I are reading all of the wonderful comments, and are so grateful for this loving and supportive CoJ community. Thank you for reading our story!
This was lovely. Congratulations! Family is everything.
this should be a blueprint for all thinking about getting married. marriage deserves to be and encompassing of exchange to see and be seen. to understand and be understood. i cannot think of one detail that didn’t encompass this. cheers to a bursting marriage!!
What gorgeous photos from the gatecrashing!! Tiffany’s face in the photo of Ben’s speech made me tear up. I wanted to mention Courtney Milan’s fantastic romance novel, The Duke Who Didn’t, which features a Hakka MC in the mid-Victorian era!
I never thought I’d see the day when there would be a Hakka character in a romance novel (and wish my Hakka grandma was around, so I could read it out loud to her 😂). Immediately reserving this at my library!
‘Mom, I’ll see you in five minutes!’ SOB! So sweet
I wanted to keep reading and reading! Such a beautiful story. Thank you for sharing.
Thanks so much for sharing, Tiffany. You story watered my eyes at several points. I loved to read how you brought different aspects of your cultures together and everybody seemed to embrace that. Love & all the best for you two
LOVE that family was the focus for both of your weddings–that’s what’s really important, when the wedding is over and the marriage begins! <3
This is so wonderful! My husband and I had 3 weddings due to the pandemic – we were working out in Singapore and had a small 10 person beach wedding there (the official one!) and our parents (his British, mine Malaysian) were already planning the wedding parties so we had to have one in Malaysia (my father is Indian-Chinese and mums Thai) incorporating as many cultural traditions as possible, and a classic church wedding back in England! It’s still a running joke with our friends and families and an ice-breaker at gatherings when we can say we ‘married’ the same person 3 times! Congratulations Tiffany and Ben on your gorgeous future together!xx
Wow, that’s amazing! I can’t imagine how many traditions you had to pack in–I’m sure the weddings were all fun and distinct in their own way. And I’ve also said the same thing to people I’ve met for the first time: “I got married twice in one year… to the same person!”
This is everything. <3
Many many happy years to you both and may you lean on one another through the fun years and the hard ones!! Love the vibrant colors and joy in these photos – especially love the deep orange and green from your New York ceremony!!
Reading this as an ex-New Yorker now living in my adopted home, Kuala Lumpur & loving it !! All the best to Tiffany & Ben
So sweet and meaningful!
This is amazing in so many ways! Thanks for letting us be a part of it all!
This was such a delight to read. Wishing you a lifetime of joy, and love abounding
I love photography like this where people aren’t staged but where you can really see all of the emotions. The two moms doing the hora is everything!
Loved this! Especially the hora picture!!!!!
Beautiful love story, beautiful photos, wishing you a beautiful life. 🥂🍾🌼
Congratulations Tiffany and Ben!!! May you have many many happy healthy years together. Thank you for sharing – this absolutely filled me with joy (your joy is contagious!) and hope on a day of worry and grief. What beautiful love being celebrated – Tiffany and Ben’s of course but also all the relatives and everyone involved…truly beautiful in every way!
Such a wonderful and joyful post!
Both weddings were so beautiful.
This wedding (and your partnership) looks amazing and hilarious and so touching. Your mom crying as she said “goodbye” to you at the car – as a mom to young adults now myself, I can absolutely see why this would be so emotional for her. Congratulations and thanks so much for sharing your beautiful celebrations with us!
This is so beautiful!! :`)
Smiling so big right now–this is so awesome! So much love, joy, and fun! Wishing Tiffany and Ben all the best! Thanking for sharing all this with us! I feel like I’m there celebrating, too!
Being married to a Hakka man for 15 years, i can attest to the challenges of the language. Well done Ben, I am impressed!
The pictures are gorgeous but the descriptions from Tiffany are what made this post come alive for me. I love how your family in Malaysia went all out to help you have a beautiful wedding!
How utterly lovely – life their incorporating both cultures and traditions, making sure family were able to participate. Thank you for this.
This wedding feature is just so lovely and special! In general I love seeing fusion weddings in general but since we also had a Jewish-Chinese wedding celebration I am a tad biased with how memorable they are. Finding meaningful ways to link our two cultures together was one of my favourite parts of the planning process and the wedding celebrations. I’d really encourage any couples who have different cultural backgrounds to intentionally plan how you want to honour both. We had a civil ceremony and then a traditional Chinese banquet dinner afterwards. And then several months later we were married by my Rabbi and we hosted our tea ceremony on the same day. Just like Tiffany, I knew that having two wedding days was a better way to properly include both our cultures than trying to cram it all into one day. Some of the cultural fusions included; both of us saying our vows in our respective languages (English and then Hebrew or Chinese), smashing the glass and having a ketubah, serving Jewish and Chinese candies at the lunchon, incorporating auspicious fruits/nuts (chinese red dates, peanuts, & lotus seeds) on the table under the chuppah next to the kiddish cup, writing our own seven blessings and including the traditional chinese blessing of “may your two hearts and two souls be united for 100 years of eternity” as one of the seven. And of course, wearing a Qun Kwa for the tea ceremony and luncheon! Which was so magical and special and I will never forget how beautiful and lucky I felt that day wearing my Qun Kwa. Truly, marrying into another culture is just a blessing… double the love, culture, and joy to celebrate! Mazel to Tiffany and Ben!
So Much FUN! And beautiful as well. This was like taking a little trip with them. Thank you!
What a beautiful celebration! Thank you for sharing it with us! Wishing you many years of happiness.
May your marriage bring you and Ben as much joy as reading this did to your many virtual guests.
That “gatekeeping” tradition is hilarious! I love how performative the cousins were! And incorporating the grandfather’s tallis is exactly what I did when i married my husband 25 years ago. Congrats to Tiffany & Ben.
Yes! This made me think of the recent post about the joy of cousins! Cousins – rowdy, sometimes unknown entities and rogue operators that they are – really are the best. This is also making me think about how I need to up my game for a young cousin who is getting married this summer. Even though I’m an old 40 year old lady, I think some cousin shenanigans might need to be afoot!!
I think this might be my favorite-ever Cup of Jo wedding (and I’ve been reading since almost the very beginning!). Wishing so much joy to the newlyweds.
So much joy, so much love. Congratulations! And what an inspired choice for recessional music (loved Faye Wong and that song in Chungking Express)!
OMG, I love all of this so much! What a fantastic story! Please write a book about your experiences! I’d read it.
Congratulations, Ben and Tiffany! Thank you so much for sharing your special day(s) with us. As a fellow Malaysian Chinese American (who also married a white dude at a restaurant, albeit one in KL), I teared up seeing my culture represented so unabashedly and joyfully. Ben’s “complicated yoga pose” and your bridesmaids’ gleeful expressions perfectly encapsulate the oh-so-familiar hazing (my husband was put through it too) had me cackling. Here’s to a lifetime of awesomeness.
This reminds me so much of my bestie’s Chinese wedding–she speaks Hakka, too!
These weddings + photos are a delight! Thanks for sharing this joy, Tiffany and Ben.
Tiffany, every part of this was so beautiful and meaningful. I love that you both put so much thought and love into all of it. Wishing you and Ben a lifetime of happiness!
This is maybe the most joyful wedding I have ever seen.
The pictures both made me laugh and cry !! The bridesmaid (or groomswoman) laughing with her phone tucked in her boobs ahahahah really relatable !!!
This made me so happy! Both Tiffany and Ben seem so joyful, creative, and thoughtful, as do their families. And the yoga challenge sent me.
As someone from that part of the world as well living in nyc, I loved this article. Wishing you a long happy marriage and many happy returns, Tiffany!
What great celebrations — so happy and meaningful and hilarious. Congrats, Tiffany and Ben! And thanks for sharing your beautiful days with us.
Congratulations!! So beautiful. Here’s to a long, happy, healthy life together!
This is so sweet! I love it all.
loved every.single.foto.!
You guys! This was so joyful and now I’m crying. Tiffany and Ben, best wishes for a long, happy marriage!! Thank you for sharing your celebrations.
Oh my gosh! This is amazing. The intercultural and interfaith love and respect between these families is so beautiful. And Ben is giving me hope for men in this weary moment in the world. Thank you for sharing your story, which deeply touched my heart. All that love.
Thank you, Tiffany and Ben, for bringing us into your special ceremonies. I felt like I was there! So much love and joy. Congratulations on your marriage! Reading CoJ wedding posts almost makes me want to try dating apps again (almost), where my luck has been nil of late but seeing happy couples is so inspiring!
Stunning!! Thank you so much for sharing.
awww, this is so sweet! love how happy they are. and it’s nice to see an example where the traditions feel like an opportunity to connect, rather than a burden.