"Brands are giving me cash wedding gifts" — this generation of young people has begun to "seek commercial sponsorships for their wedding banquets"

Golden October, the National Day holiday arrives.

While social media Moments are flooded with stunning scenery from different IP locations, another wave of "red bombs" has arrived as scheduled — the perfect timing, favorable location and harmonious conditions for holding wedding banquets during the National Day holiday make Chinese people completely unable to resist.

"It's already a fixed part of my annual expenditure every October." Xiaoju (pseudonym), a post-95s young person who will attend three wedding banquets this National Day, is happy for the happiness of her friends while feeling sorry for her wallet. "It's really a sweet burden."

Apart from Moments, there is an endless stream of topics and shares about wedding banquets on social platforms. "E-Commerce Online" found that at the wedding tables of this generation of young people, in addition to traditional wedding candies, there are also spicy strip gift boxes and milk tea; at the welcome area, in addition to wedding photos, there are also KT boards of some brands. More and more newlyweds are showing off their "brand sponsorship".

In the past, brand-sponsored celebrity weddings were a common practice in the entertainment industry. Nowadays, ordinary people can also get brand sponsorship for their weddings.

On Xiaohongshu, the entry "wedding sponsorship" has received more than 10 million views and nearly 350,000 discussions. Some people get sponsorship from more than 20 brands for one wedding, some people get "wedding gifts" from 5 brands with a Xiaohongshu account of only 600 fans, and some brands have sponsored more than 2000 weddings in total.

When marriage, this major event in life, meets this group of highly creative young people and brands eager to find new growth points, a new trend of wedding sponsorship is quietly emerging.

Behind this, is it a money-saving strategy of careful planning by young people, or an accurate breakthrough under the involution of brand marketing? In the evolution of wedding banquet forms, what exactly do young people truly desire?

A "Two-Way Rush"

The first to pour into the wedding banquet scene are actually new tea drink brands.

As the post-95s generation gradually becomes the main force holding wedding banquets, "toasting relatives and friends with milk tea" has gradually become popular. Tingting, who held her wedding two years ago, is also one of those who used "extra-large cup milk tea for toasting". She believes that drinking alcohol hurts the body, and "sweet drinks" are more suitable, which are safe and good-looking.

(Toasting with extra-large cup milk tea, source from the Internet)

Among many milk tea brands, Heytea stands out with the character "Xi" (happiness) in its name, bringing full emotional value and social value with its auspicious implication.

Heytea is also one of the first brands to launch wedding packages. In May 2022, Heytea cooperated with civil affairs bureaus in many places to provide free tea drinks for newlyweds who got marriage certificates. The next month, it launched the "Double Happiness" activity, giving Heytea to nearly 10,000 newlyweds within one month, and took the opportunity to launch the wedding banquet group meal business, opening up the wedding consumption market.

According to official statistics, in 2024 alone, this business sold more than 200,000 wedding "Xi" tea cups, covering more than 100 cities across the country. Subsequently, tea brands such as Cha Yan Yue Se and Lelecha also successively launched wedding gift boxes and group meal discounts.

Bawangchaji, with its classical and elegant cup design and festive "little red cup" packaging, also made "holding happy events" an official group meal entry in August this year. Official accounts in Sichuan, Chongqing, Gansu, Beijing, Shandong, Hunan, Yunnan and other regions have successively released wedding group meal previews, and unified actions at the group level have replaced the previous limited activities of some stores.

Bawangchaji happy event package, source from CHAGEE Bawangchaji (Hunan) Xiaohongshu

Casual snack brands are also quick to respond, among which the most active spicy strip brand is Malawangzi. In 2022, Malawangzi officially launched the "Malawangzi Spicy Strip Wedding Plan" and began to sponsor weddings in various creative ways.

Every month, Malawangzi will launch the recruitment activity for the spicy strip wedding of the next month on its official account. Newlyweds who successfully sign up will get corresponding spicy strip wedding snacks and a specially customized extra-long spicy strip for the door-blocking game during wedding pick-up, and have the opportunity to unlock the upgraded version of wedding sponsorship.

The wedding sponsorship trend that has emerged recently is exactly a "reverse call" from young people after these brands take the initiative to enter the market.

Since some brands are willing to sponsor weddings, some young people take the initiative to seek sponsorship. On public platforms, some netizens have directly obtained more than 20 sponsorships covering wedding shoes, beverages, alcohol, food, snacks and other categories, and the alcohol category alone includes beer, red wine, rice wine and many other types.

Coconut (pseudonym), a post-00s young person who will hold a wedding at the end of the year, told reporters that she also plans to sign up for recruitment activities and call on brands to see if she can get some sponsorship. She found that brands directly or indirectly related to wedding consumption, such as food, wedding supplies, beauty and personal care, are particularly active, and many brands will release wedding sponsorship activities for ordinary people on Xiaohongshu.

The new generation of consumers represented by Coconut have long been accustomed to the lifestyle of getting free desserts after checking in and giving good reviews when eating out, and getting free samples after posting product content. For them, wedding sponsorship is also a similar "barter" mode.

They don't take products for free. In exchange, they will neatly place the brand's products on the wedding banquet table and post them on social media, which not only exposes the brand to the guests at the wedding scene, but also increases the brand's exposure on social platforms.

Wedding banquets have long been a "two-way rush" between brands and newlyweds.

Why are brands scrambling to "give wedding gifts"?

Brands are willing to give products to a pair of strangers, which actually has a clear commercial logic.

In the business world, there is no such thing as unprovoked generosity. Behind the brands' scramble to "give wedding gifts", they are targeting the special scene of wedding banquets, which comes with emotional values such as romance, joy and touching moments.

According to the data from the relevant report of China Research and PricewaterhouseCoopers, the scale of China's wedding culture market exceeded 2.3 trillion yuan in 2025, with an average annual growth of 9.8% in the past five years. The per capita expenditure on weddings exceeds 130,000 yuan, and the per capita expenditure in first-tier cities has exceeded 220,000 yuan.

At the same time, the dominance of weddings is shifting to young people. Traditional formulaic weddings are no longer popular. Young people pay more attention to cost performance, memorable points and social sharing value. Through "sponsorship", brands bind their own products with the beautiful memories of consumers in their lives, which can obtain extremely high emotional premium.

This emotional connection established at key nodes can easily be transformed into long-term brand loyalty, thus locking in the consumption decision-making power of a family for several years or even ten years in the future.

More importantly, wedding banquets are "high-traffic spots" on social media such as WeChat Moments, Douyin and Xiaohongshu. The carefully edited 9-grid photos and Vlogs at important moments in life are the most real and convincing advertising spaces for brands. This kind of communication based on acquaintance social interaction and real sharing has a conversion efficiency far exceeding that of traditional information flow advertisements.

Taking Malawangzi as an example, not only hundreds of registration information will appear in the comment area of each wedding recruitment activity, but also the extra-long spicy strip for wedding pick-up has become the choice of many consumers. In the e-commerce store of Malawangzi, the cumulative sales of the extra-long spicy strip for wedding pick-up have exceeded 100,000 units.

In short, by providing products or services to sponsor wedding banquets, brands not only reduce the wedding preparation cost of newlyweds, but also accurately reach young groups with high consumption potential, realizing multi-dimensional improvement of brand exposure, favorability and product sales.

On the surface, wedding sponsorship seems that brands are "spending money freely", but in fact it is a long-term investment in occupying consumers' minds through deep connection with segmented scenes in the fierce market competition.

In addition to spontaneously sponsoring weddings, many brands also participate in various wedding banquet activities in the form of public welfare donations.

In May this year, a public welfare group wedding themed "Time Covenant · Love in Hangzhou" was held in Xiaoshan, Hangzhou. FAW Audi provided wedding cars and souvenirs, domestic IP derivative brand March Monster sent limited-edition dolls, and a number of brands completed collective scene exposure through the public welfare wedding.

From launching packages and sponsoring ordinary people to deeply participating in city-level wedding IPs, brands' layout in the wedding banquet scene is getting deeper and deeper.

The Freedom of Wedding Banquets for Contemporary Young People

If the entry of brands is the inevitable result of commercial logic, then the fact that ordinary newlyweds are keen to seek wedding sponsorship reflects the profound changes in contemporary young people's concepts of marriage and childbirth and self-awareness.

Looking at the evolution of wedding banquet forms in recent years, from the "traditional grand wedding" in the past that pursued grand hotel banquets, luxury motorcades and complicated wedding pick-up processes, to the now popular travel weddings, party weddings, no-pick-up "minimalist weddings", and even weddings held in McDonald's and Haidilao, the forms are constantly deconstructed and reshaped.

Behind this is young people's rejection of the "performative nature" of traditional wedding banquets. What they care most about is whether the expression form of the wedding banquet is exactly what they want.

In January 2026, a survey of 1333 participants released by the Social Survey Center of China Youth Daily showed that when planning weddings, 77.9% of the respondents paid more attention to their own and their partners' ideas, 52.1% of the respondents would consider the opinions of parents or elders, and 23.5% of the respondents would refer to the suggestions of friends.

The attitude of this generation of young people towards weddings can be summarized as "subtracting from the links and adding to the experience".

They adjust the structure of wedding budget, subtract from traditional links such as wedding banquets and ceremonies, and add to links that provide experience and emotional value, so as to truly spend money and energy on the places they care most about.

Different forms of wedding banquet design, source from the Internet

Young people who want to "be the master of their own wedding" also hope to get the dual satisfaction of spirit and value while pursuing love and freedom.

Back to the matter of wedding sponsorship, the logic is the same. Young people get brand sponsorship to save money, but what they pursue is far more than saving money. With a limited budget, they achieve a higher level of wedding effect through brand sponsorship. This balance between pragmatism and romance is also an important source of their value satisfaction.

Wedding banquets evolve with countless forms, but the certainty of "being the master of my own wedding banquet" and the original intention of longing for dual satisfaction of spirit and value are the most sincere gifts this generation of young people dedicate to life.

No matter spicy strips on the table or toasting with milk tea, behind every "atypical" wedding banquet is people's attitude of taking life seriously.

This article is from WeChat official account "E-Commerce Online" (ID: dianshangmj), written by Tang Guo, authorized to release by 36Kr.