“iLIFE iNJU” Collective Wedding Ceremony 2017 was held in Fang Zhaozhou Gymnasium in the afternoon of May 20 as one of the activities in celebration of the 115th anniversary of Nanjing University. The ceremony shows a new view of life by young people.
Yang Zhong, executive vice chancellor of Nanjing University, officiated the marriage of the 115 young couples.
An audience of over 3,000 witnessed this happy moment, including faculties and students, families and friends of the newlyweds and representatives of alumni. Several network platforms broadcast the ceremony.
Ceremony Scene (photographed by She Zhijun)
Over 600 couples applied for this collective wedding ceremony, including alumni, university staff and students.
Finally participating in the ceremony were 115 couples, 57 of them including alumni (35 with both parties being alumni), 6 being faculty and staff, and 52 including NJU students (20 with both parties being NJU students).
Sixty-nine of all the couples belong to the generation born after 1990.
Some of them had a long courtship of 15 years.
Many of the couples are alumni from Medical School, School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, School of Geographic and Oceanographic Sciences and Business School of Nanjing University.
Presiding over the ceremony were an alumni couple, Zhang Lu, 02 alumnus from School of Electronic Science and Engineering, and Song Yang, 02 alumna from School of Social and Behavioral Sciences. They were invited for this event by the Youth League.
While in school, Zhang and Song were president and acting vice president of the university’s student union, respectively, and both participated in the graduate students’ teaching corps in western China.
One item on the agenda of the ceremony was showing the video of the love story of academician Feng Duan and his wife Chen Lianfang.
On May 22nd Feng celebrated his 94th birthday, and this couple has been married for over 60 years. The audience was impressed by the letters and love poems they had exchanged over a period of more than five decades and had now preciously saved in a chest.
Speaking as the wedding witness, executive vice chancellor Yang Zhong urged the newlyweds to unite their lives forever and make come true their “family dream, NJU dream and China’s dream.”
Executive Vice Chancellor Yang Zhong delivering the wedding witness speech and issuing certificates
(photographed by She Zhijun)
Chen Jun，university president and academician, sent the newlyweds his greetings on a video.
Following the announcement of the master of ceremony, the 115 couples exchanged “NJU Wedding Rings,” specially customized by the ceremony sponsor.
Yang Zhong, together with representatives of the schools to which these newlyweds belong, issued special NJU Wedding Certificates and declared vows for the couples in the name of Nanjing University.
Certificates (photographed by She Zhijun)
This year’s ceremony was the second held by Nanjing University.
Different from last year’s, the ceremony this year highlighted a new outlook on life for young people of Nanjing University, that is, “sincere heart, thrifty home, high ambition and great work,” and in fact, the wedding ceremony unflolded in four chapters corresponding to heart, home, ambition and work in an effort to shape the students’ value of life.
It is the hope of the university, said a staff member of the Youth League, that, through the interplay of the individual and the collective at a collective wedding ceremony like this, NJU’s young people can feel the warmth of love and pursue a value of “great love” with “small families” in support of the “big family.”
(Youth League Committee; News Center)
