Photo credit: KPG-Payless/Shutterstock

By Jessica Shuran Yu

Jessica Liang moves with great speed.

With swift, practiced motions, Liang, 41, blends creamy foundation onto a bridesmaid’s cheek.

Once the teenage girl’s makeup is perfected, Liang instructs her to change into a beige chiffon dress. “Go go,” she points at the dressing room in the corner. Within seconds, another new bridesmaid sits down in Liang’s makeup chair, ready to be transformed.

It was Thanksgiving Day, once the busiest day of the year for Chinatown weddings. A decade ago, East Broadway, also known as “Little Fuzhou,” had a lineup of several wedding boutiques that provided full services for weddings: renting out dresses, providing makeup services, and prenuptial photo shoots for brides and grooms.

Fujianese immigrants are eager to tie the knot on the holiday since it’s typically the easiest day of the year for their families and friends to come together in celebration.

Today, little of this wedding tradition remains in Chinatown.

All the wedding boutiques have now closed except The One Wedding Plaza, where Liang works as the general manager and makeup artist. Meanwhile, iconic banquet halls, like Jing Fong, have shut down after suffering economic losses during the pandemic, leaving few wedding venue options in Manhattan’s Chinatown. According to a 2022 study, Chinatown saw a 26% decrease in jobs between 2019 and 2021, double the amount lost in Flushing. And according to the city, 21.4% of storefronts in Chinatown were vacant in the same year.

To read the entire article: The Last Wedding Shop in Chinatown