Young people prefer destination weddings. Yunnan creates ‘Love in Yunnan’ to promote the integrated development of wedding tourism

During the National Day holiday, Lianghe County, Dehong Dai and Jingpo Autonomous Prefecture, Yunnan Province has prepared a feast of national culture: the passionate and unrestrained Munao Song, the courtyard drama that travels through time, the wild rice fish experience, the fireworks-filled ancient town delicacies, and the comfortable and enjoyable mountain hiking...

Just before the National Day feast kicked off, representatives from the cultural tourism and wedding industries across the country gathered here to participate in the launch ceremony of "Yunnan, the Preferred Destination for Travel Weddings" and the Dehong Prefecture home promotion event. What they witnessed was not just an event, but also a signal: Yunnan is upgrading wedding tourism from a single wedding consumption to a "sweet business" that carries emotional expression, cultural dissemination and industrial collaboration.

There are some places that are just perfect for saying ‘I do’. In the evening breeze of Ruili River, in the morning mist of Daying River, in the long tail notes of Hulusi, in the love songs sung by 26 ethnic groups from generation to generation, young men and women looked into each other's eyes and spoke these words affectionately.

Why young people are no longer willing to ‘play’ a wedding

'For this generation of young people who are fearful of society and have a strong sense of boundaries, instead of spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to please a group of 'relatives and relatives' with whom they have no contact at all, it is better to leave their budget to the people and things they care about. ’ said Yan Yun (pseudonym), a bride from Beijing who just completed her wedding ceremony at the Erhai Lake in Cangshan Mountain, Dali, Yunnan.

Speaking of traditional weddings, Yan Yun feels that they are more like 'tools' to match the process: wedding reception, lengthy ceremony, toasting at the table, and the newlyweds are forced to deal with a large number of unfamiliar relatives and friends. The emcees at hotel weddings all use the same words, their lines are universal, their positions are fixed, and their sensationalism is deliberate. Weddings seem to have become an occasion for parents to collect their share of the money and maintain relationships.

‘Young people don’t actually reject the sense of ritual; what they reject is the routine process. ’ Yan Yun said that the popularity of ‘destination weddings’ among young people is actually because this generation of young people no longer want to do ‘large-scale social reporting performances’, and are more willing to engage in a more cost-effective emotional consumption with ‘me’ as the protagonist.

Cao Zhonghua, director of the Marriage Industry Working Committee of the Chinese Traditional Culture Promotion Association, pointed out that the new generation of young people is no longer satisfied with the same hotel wedding ceremony. What they desire is a unique expression of love and a precious memory created with relatives and friends. He believes that China's wedding industry is undergoing a profound change, transforming from the traditional 'wedding and banquet economy' to the 'emotional experience economy', which has also given rise to the explosive growth of the trillion-level blue ocean market of 'wedding + tourism'.

Yunnan has spotted this trend and has accumulated a considerable market foundation. Data provided by the Yunnan Provincial Department of Culture and Tourism shows that after years of cultivation and development, the scale of Yunnan’s wedding photography and travel photography industry continues to grow. In 2025, Dali will hold a total of about 5,600 destination weddings, achieving an output value of about 280 million yuan, and serving more than 220,000 pairs of travel photography consumers throughout the year; Lijiang's wedding photography and travel photography market entities will increase from 83 in 2015 to 2,056 in 2025. In 2025, it will receive about 90,000 pairs of wedding photography and travel photography customers, and their comprehensive spending will exceed 1 billion yuan. In order to guide the healthy and orderly development of the industry, this year the "Yunnan Province Travel Photography Service Standardization Guidelines (Trial)" was issued to promote the standardization and normalization of the wedding photography and travel photography industry.

In Cao Zhonghua’s view, there are currently three trends in wedding tourism: The first is ‘deep cultural immersion’. A wedding is not just a ceremony for two people, but a blending of two families. Couples hope that their wedding can tell a story. The second is ‘extreme personalized customization’. From destination selection, ritual process to food and accommodation experience, every aspect must be in line with one’s own emotional value and immersive experience. In addition, there is "sustainability and community symbiosis". More and more couples are paying attention to the social value and environmental impact of weddings. They tend to choose destinations and suppliers that respect local culture, promote community development, and practice environmental protection concepts.

‘Love in Yunnan’ has become a new model for the integration of culture and tourism

When young people increasingly favor personalized, immersive and scene-based weddings and are no longer satisfied with going through the process in hotel banquet halls, Yunnan just provides this kind of ‘non-template’ venue. In order to adapt to the changes in young people's views on marriage and love, in September last year, the Yunnan Provincial Department of Culture and Tourism, in conjunction with China Culture Media Group and other organizations, launched the travel wedding destination brand promotion campaign "Love in Yunnan" in Dali. The wedding ceremony was moved to snowy mountains, lakeside or ancient cities, and it took a few days to complete a "wedding + travel" compound experience to satisfy young people's pursuit of emotional authenticity.

The core of "Love in Yunnan" is to break the inherent boundaries of traditional indoor weddings, use heaven and earth as a palace, use mountains and seas as witnesses, and use culture to send blessings. ’ Rao Xiangbi, deputy director of the Yunnan Provincial Department of Culture and Tourism, said that Yunnan’s rich and diverse natural mountain resources create an unrepeatable wedding ceremony scene. Abandoning assembly lines and templated processes, couples can gain an exclusive experience of the blend of nature and humanity here, satisfying the public's yearning for authenticity, advocating nature and preferring unique weddings.

In Dehong, Yunnan, the Dai people's expressions of affection when they are "catching up", the Jingpo people's "string girls" sincere confessions, the Achang people's "playing with the groom with chopsticks" humorous marriage customs, the brave pursuit behind the Lisu people's "robbing marriage", the De'ang people's ancient agreement of "using tea as a matchmaker and silver as an oath"... Each ethnic wedding custom contains the most authentic understanding of love and the most pious blessings.

These ethnic cultures scattered throughout Yunnan show that a wedding is not just a matter of two people, but is witnessed by the landscape, supported by culture, and blessed by blessings passed down from generation to generation.

This year's "Love in Yunnan" event moved from popular tourist destinations such as Dali and Lijiang to the border counties of Lianghe County, Dehong Prefecture. Lianghe is known as the "Hometown of Chinese Hulusi". Hulusi has a soft tone and long-lasting affection, and is a token of love for local young people of all ethnic groups. The footsteps of wedding tours have entered this land, allowing more wedding customs, culture and landscape scenes scattered in the border areas to be seen and experienced.

Yunnan's "sustainable and community symbiosis" development model allows the wedding tourism industry to not only bring couples to border areas, but also allow local communities, ethnic craftsmen, and village residents to participate and benefit from it, making a wedding not only an exclusive memory for the couple, but also a process in which border culture is respected, passed on, and shared.

Behind this model, what is tested is the coordination ability of the entire wedding and travel industry chain. Wedding tourism has long gone beyond single wedding consumption and developed into a new cultural and tourism integrated business that covers experience perception, emotional expression, and mass communication. It involves multiple links such as weddings, cultural tourism, hotels, transportation, photography, etc. It is difficult for one city or one company to do it all.

At the "Love in Yunnan" event, the Southwest Wedding Industry Innovation Alliance was unveiled in Lianghe. Wedding industry associations in Yunnan, Sichuan, Guizhou, Chongqing, and Guangxi began to coordinate and link up to explore product co-creation, market mutual promotion, and industry co-construction. At the same time, the ‘Wedding Tourism Product Research and Development Practice Base’ was settled in Lianghe, providing a permanent carrier for route research and development, personnel training, and venue incubation. Signing contracts were also signed at the event, and the projects covered the transformation of wedding tourism formats in scenic hotels, wedding scene creation, customer transportation, souvenir development, rural wedding tourism innovation, etc.

‘Wedding travel has its own unique cultural communication attributes. The process of couples traveling to mountains and seas to forge a good relationship is also a process of experiencing and spreading Chinese romance and oriental life aesthetics. ’ said Zhou Hongyang, Deputy Secretary of the Party Committee and General Manager of China Culture Media Group Co., Ltd.

China Youth Daily·China Youth Daily reporter Zhang Wenling