Wedding guests need to give more generously than ever

If you want to be a welcome guest at your friend's wedding, be prepared to stuff more than HK$600 in your gift envelope.

It seems the woman who got Hong Kong talking when she used Facebook to tell would-be guests not to come to her banquet unless they paid more than HK$500 has a point.

Getting married is expensive, and the lion's share of the cost is the wedding banquet, a traditional must-have in Chinese society. Although friends invited to the dinner can pay whatever amount they want, an ESDlife survey covering 1,768 respondents found that a sum less than HK$612 would be unlikely to cover the food and beverage costs.

The website, which offers information about wedding-related services to couples, conducts an annual survey on the cost of getting married. The most recent survey found that couples paid an average of HK$282,317 on their weddings, 6 per cent more than last year. They spent an average of HK$147,173 on banquets, which usually involved about 240 guests at 20 tables.

"Giving HK$500 is not quite enough [to cover banquet costs]," ESDlife research manager Jeremy Mou Chi-wah said.

The woman, whose post went viral, said: "I don't want to create economic difficulties for you, but I'm not operating a charity." She was upset that people paid the same amount (HK$500) for dinners at restaurants and hotels.