The Qing Emperor's Grand Wedding

Marriage as an act of state

A Qing emperor's grand wedding (*dahun*) was a state ceremony conducted when a reigning emperor married and installed his empress. It united a dynastic marriage with the formal establishment of the empress's rank and the public expression of court ritual. Unlike an ordinary household wedding, the event engaged court offices, imperial relatives, the bride's kin, processional equipment, and substantial expenditures.

The Palace Museum identifies four emperors who celebrated grand weddings in the Forbidden City after taking the throne: Shunzhi, Kangxi, Tongzhi, and Guangxu. All had come to the throne young. Other Qing rulers were generally married before accession, so their weddings cannot automatically be counted as reigning emperors' palace grand weddings. The early-Qing ritual system was still developing; the nineteenth-century weddings of Tongzhi and Guangxu are especially well documented in ceremonial writings and visual records.

The sequence of rites

Key stages could include formal presentation of gifts (*nacai*), the great betrothal gifts (*dazheng*), investiture of the empress, ceremonial escorting of the bride, the joining of cups (*hejin*), and subsequent audiences, ancestral rites, proclamations, and banquets. Investiture involved delivery of a gold patent and seal. During the ceremonial escort the bride was received by appointed representatives, rather than by the emperor himself in the manner of an ordinary bridegroom. Documents and objects from Guangxu's wedding show how late-Qing agencies prepared such a state event. Prescriptive texts must nevertheless be distinguished from the actual expenditures and procedures of any particular celebration.

Related encyclopedia entry: The Empress's Court Crown.

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