Goldfish
A friend of mine married a Taiwanese girl, in America. They wanted the room where they were marrying to have various symbolic objects around, mostly related to her background. This included red material draped everywhere (red is a lucky colour), hundreds of candles all around the place, and a live goldfish in a bowl on each of the main tables. I and some mates were asked to help set the room up. Draping red cloth around was easy. Placing the 200 or so candles was also easy, if time consuming. However the goldfish were a real challenge.

They were kept in an aquarium in my friend's apartment. He'd bought 10 large glass fish bowls. Now I thought it would be simplest to pop the fish in a couple of big water-filled plastic bags and drive to the place, then fill up the bowls with water and drop the fish in. However one of the other blokes helping was a biologist, who told us that we couldn't use tap water, and the water had to be at the right temperature, or the fish would die. So we ended up scooping water out of the aquarium into the fish bowls, catching the fish, placing them in the bowls, and then taking a taxi down the road to the place. Of course it was impossible to keep the water in the bowls so by the time the first taxi arrived we all had soaking wet trousers and the fish were looking very nervous. We had to make 2 journeys to transport all the fish: the second time we thought of putting clingfilm over the top of the bowls. This saved our trousers but the fish were no less traumatised by the journey.

So when we had all the fish in the right place we had to top up the bowls with water anyway, as most of it had sloshed out onto our legs. And yes the biologist was right - either the coldness or the tap-i-ness of the water, or maybe the traumatic taxi ride, something caused half the fish to die. So by the time the bride walked in half the fish were floating motionless in the bowls. We prioritised the live fish to the happy couple's table, and those of their immediate families.

I'd love to say that the draped red material caught fire on the candles and distracted everyone from the dead fish, but it wasn't to be. So we sat through the ceremony and the speeches with dead fish on the tables. The bride and groom only realised what was going when they walked round all the tables afterwards, greeting their guests. Apparently for goldfish to be lucky in Taiwanese culture they have to be alive.
(Smale is stuffed, Fri 14 Nov 2014, 15:14, Reply)