‘So tacky’: Chinese wedding guests in a flap as bride enters ballroom on giant mechanical goose which steals the show on her big day

“Legend has it that the swan is a symbol of loyalty and eternal love, a symbol of peace and kindness, honesty and bravery, and great ambitions,” the emcee said.

“It has been called ‘the angel of beauty and kindness’ since ancient times,” she went on, inviting the guests to take photos of the “swan”.

The stunned wedding photographer, surnamed Qin, who took the video on February 15, said the machine is a special feature of the venue.

Online observers reacted to the wedding ceremony with humour.

“It’s so tacky. If my wedding was like this, my friends would laugh at me for the rest of my life,” said one.

“I wonder how they talked the bride into it?” asked another.

A third cited a Chinese proverb, joking: “A toad wishes to eat a swan”, which is commonly used to ridicule people who desire a partner seen as too good for them. “Is the groom riding a toad on the other side of the hall?” she added.

This is not the first awkwardly innovative wedding ceremony to make headlines in China.

In January, a wedding ceremony in eastern China’s Jiangsu province invited a street performer to throw axes at a guest, shocking many online.

In 2016, two enthusiastic animal-lovers exchanged a pair of albino Burmese pythons as love tokens on their wedding day, then posed for photos with the pythons around their necks in northeastern China’s Jilin province.