When my husband and I finally settled on a date for our wedding ceremony, the first person I shared the news with was my closest childhood friend. "Of course I'll attend your wedding!" my friend, surnamed Jiang, replied excitedly on WeChat. But as soon as I put down my mobile, I suddenly felt uneasy. Even though I love her like a sister, Jiang has always been miserly, like the father in Eugénie Grandet.

A decade ago, Jiang and I both attended our mutual friend's wedding. As Chinese do, we prepared hongbao (red envelopes filled with cash) for the newlyweds. I gave 300 yuan ($45.62), which was quite generous back then for a recent graduate earning a pittance. Jiang, on the other hand, only had a single 100 yuan note even though her salary doubled mine.

Based on this memory, I'm a little anxious that Jiang, who is still single, will be just as tightfisted at my wedding. Even though I don't expect to profit much from my nuptials, unlike some upscale Shanghai weddings that generate hundreds of thousands of yuan, as a woman I'll be personally disappointed if my best friend doesn't do something special for me.

In Chinese culture, people give hongbao to express congratulations and good wishes. Except perhaps corrupt officials, nobody is more dependent on hongbao than newlyweds who, in lieu of physical gifts such as are given in Western weddings, need those hongbao (which go for at least 500 yuan today) to pay back the expenses of their wedding ceremony. In Shanghai, where even an average ceremony banquet at a 3-star hotel with just dinner and drinks can cost upwards of 100,000 yuan, middle-class couples are desperate to receive hongbao.

But for most guests, giving a hongbao is a burden. Nobody actually likes to give away free cash, not even to their best friends or closest relatives. There are in fact many high-profile instances of friendships being broken because of the notorious hongbao. A man surnamed Pei from Chongqing made the news after holding a special post-wedding party just for his old college buddies who didn't attend his wedding - so that he could hit them up for a hongbao. Based on their accounts on their social media, the pressure placed on them made them feel so awkward and uncomfortable that they each publicly swore never to invite their greedy friend to their own weddings.

And just as hongbao are known to break up friendships and families, there's nothing in the thousands years old tradition of giving hongbao to prove that giving someone money will make their relationship last any longer. Indeed, having attended pretty much each of my old friends' and classmates' weddings, just because I gave them a generous hongbao did not compel many of them to stay in touch with me after.

Another friend from university recently invited me to her February wedding, but as I will be busy preparing for my own March wedding, I doubt I'll have time to travel to Jiangsu Province to attend hers. But I still feel obliged to give her a hongbao, which I'll do virtually by using WeChat's new bank-transfer function. She'll probably do the same for me, which basically cancels each other out except for the wire-transfer fees. But tradition and culture dictates that we must still go through this exchange.

My new husband, who works at a large company with over 700 employees, is often the recipient of wedding invitations from colleagues, some he is barely acquainted with, who he suspects are just using him for a hongbao. Since he is a team leader, it is customary for him to give more than his subordinates - at least 1,000 yuan - which tends to deplete his bank account every autumn, when most weddings are held.

As such, he and I have both decided that we don't want to place a similar burden on our co-workers and therefore will not be inviting any of them to our wedding. Coincidentally, our spiritual teacher, a Buddhist priest, designated that according to our respective birth dates and zodiac signs, our forthcoming ceremony will be held on a workday.

Nobody wants to sit through a wedding banquet knowing they have to be at work the next morning, so that pretty much solves the mutually uncomfortable issue for us and for them.