Japanese culture: Japanese-style angpows

Attending my first Japanese wedding next week. Have to prepare an angpow, so I went to the 100-yen shop to buy one. Their angpows are shockingly expensive - at least 298-yen (S$4) for one from a normal shop! The Japanese-style angpow is actually a large piece of Japanese paper folded back like an envelope and tied with a ribbon.

For celebratory occasions e.g. birthdays, weddings, New Year's, these money envelopes are called ご祝儀袋 (goshuugibukuro). They are typically white with some small red decoration on it and some gold and silver wire tied around it like a ribbon.

The ones given at funerals are called 御霊前袋(goreizenbukuro). These are completely white with a black and white/silver ribbon tied around it in a very simple and plain fashion.

What I thought would be a relatively straightforward errand of buying an angpow turned out to be a 30-min expedition at the 100-yen shop. Turns out that the design of the envelope depends on:

a) the formality of the function (wedding ceremony / wedding dinner / wedding reception?); and

b) unbelieveable as it sounds, HOW MUCH MONEY YOU'RE GOING TO PUT IN IT?! The more money there is in the envelope, the fancier the ribbon is.

These envelopes are suitable if you're giving no more than 10,000-yen and if it's a more casual event, e.g. wedding reception.

This is if you're giving between 50,000-100,000 yen

And the champion of all angpows...it is literally larger than the others (although you can't tell from the photo)...for 500,000 to 3,000,000 yen!

The one I eventually bought, suitable for between 10,000-30,000-yen