Oh hey, here’s yet another case of social media influencers pissing people off. The Straits Times just uncovered the fact that some disgruntled wedding guests of Melissa Celestine Koh (who’s apparently a big deal on Instagram) complained about having to give the couple red packets because her recent wedding was so heavily funded by numerous brands.
If you’re a guest at a Chinese wedding, it’s customary to give hongbaos (red packets) to the newlyweds. The amount of money you put inside those packets may vary, depending on your relationship with the couple and the lavishness of the wedding itself — the location, the food, the drinks, etc. Having a 10-course meal at a top-tier hotel, for example, would obviously demand exorbitant prices and could set back guests up to over $200 per head.
With this in mind, you can bet that a big shot Instagram influencer will go overboard when it comes her wedding. According to The Straits Times piece, the 28-year-old’s big day at the Ritz-Carlton Millenia Singapore hotel ballroom featured a photo booth, a flower bar for guests to design hand bouquets, a styling counter offering makeovers by make-up artists (with Dior cosmetics), as well as free-flow gin and tonic.
Wedding favors were no less grand — guests received TWG tea, macarons, artisanal soap and dozens of puppies. Okay, maybe not that last one, but you get the point.
An impressive wedding for sure that must’ve looked amazing for the ‘gram (it did), and it was an unspoken thing that the cash in the guests’ hongbaos would have to match the grandness of it all. So you can imagine why a few guests felt gypped when they found out later that the wedding banquet had been heavily sponsored. What were they paying for, if nearly everything in Koh’s wedding was freely provided by brands, they questioned. (Perhaps they just didn’t see the hongbaos as a gift to the newlyweds, to celebrate with them on their big day and bless them as they embarked on their new chapter of life.)
It was only later on that Koh made shout-outs and thank you notes on her Instagram to all the sponsors involved in her wedding.
One friend of Koh was so upset by the influencer not disclosing the wedding sponsorships that she explicitly said “I felt cheated”.
“The sponsorships cheapened the wedding, made it insincere, and I felt as though she had made money off me through her wedding,” she said to the paper.
The list of sponsored stuff included 27 dresses made for Koh’s bridesmaids by designer brand Juillet, as well as bling and jewelry by Swarovski and Tiffany & Co. Even Ritz-Carlton Millenia Singapore had some “partnership” that included a food tasting, bridal spa party and the wedding banquet itself. Mad perks indeed — after all, she does have over 250,000 followers spread across both her Instagram accounts.
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