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They were curiosities. Described in terms both outdated and insulting — Orientals, foreigners, Chinamen — the wedding rituals and banquets of couples of Asian descent drew an anthropological interest from reporters at The New York Times. Recounted in tiny type on inside pages, their romances were, nevertheless, news for a city teeming with new arrivals.

Today, of course, wedding announcements for couples of Asian descent are folded into the newspaper’s wedding pages with everyone else’s. In the early years, however, marriages unusual enough to note were often unions between whites and people of Asian descent, most of which were rendered downright scandalous.

In February 1913, The Times told of Marion Law, a Brooklyn woman who had rejected her mother’s wishes and married Frank Law, a Chinese merchant, “out of spite.”

The couple moved to China, and Mrs. Law got her comeuppance, in the view of The Times. “Girl Didn’t Want Man Mother Chose — Children Now in Home,” the subhead read. Mr. Law had died in China, forcing Mrs. Law to return and place their three children in a children’s home in Hackensack, N.J.

“Her parents have not been reconciled to the marriage,” the article added.

Evelyn Kendall Moy, who had been raised in China, was set to marry Henry F. Hinkley of Miles City, Mont., in December 1924, but their minister “refused to perform the ceremony because of a state law prohibiting the marriage of Chinese and whites.” For the Montana marriage to happen, the newspaper reported, Ms. Moy’s adoptive mother had to swear under oath that she was born to white parents.

The couples of Asian descent whose weddings The Times covered a century ago were usually well-to-do. The Oct. 15, 1893, edition described the wedding reception of Chu Fong, Chinatown’s richest man, and his bride, Lum San Toy, as “Half Oriental, Half New-York City Style, and Wholly Charming.” Guests included a senator and an assistant district attorney.

Read “Chu Fong and His Bride" (October 15, 1893)

Mr. Chu wore a cardinal-red silk tunic; Ms. Lum, a jeweled headdress and a shell-pink silk gown over her tiny bound feet. Musicians “poured forth a greeting evidently delicious to Chinese ears, but novel in the extreme to the guests.”

In August 1943, Miss Shih-Yung Wang, an international law scholar at Fordham from a notable Shanghai family, wed Ek Khoo Tan, scion of a real estate family in Singapore who worked as a civil engineer in New York.

That is as far as their wedding announcement went. One of their daughters, Elaine Wang, a physician based in Toronto who works in the pharmaceutical industry, recently filled in the life that followed.

They lived at first on Riverside Drive in Manhattan. But after Mao Zedong’s rise to power scattered the elder Ms. Wang’s family in Shanghai, the couple joined Mr. Tan’s family in Singapore, then moved to Hong Kong. They divorced in the 1960s, and Mr. Tan returned to Singapore, where he went into politics and started a second family.

Ms. Wang opened a sophisticated boutique, flying to Europe each year and returning with the latest styles for elegant women across Southeast Asia.

She kept up the pace for decades. “One of the things my mother really stressed to me as I was growing up was, ‘You come from privilege, so you have to return to society, give back,’” Ms. Wang said.

Her mother died in 1984 and her father in the 1990s. He had lost touch with the three children from his first marriage, who knew little about his educational background.

When Ms. Wang read about the “Committed” series for The Times, she emailed us asking if we could find a copy of her parents’ wedding announcement, which she had heard about but had never seen.

We did.

Vivian Yee has been a Metro reporter with The New York Times since 2012. Follow her on Twitter @VivianHYee.