weddings part one

A few weekends ago my coteacher was married. He invited me to the wedding. Cambodian weddings are very different than the typical "American wedding" you may think of. There are multiple days, several ceremonies, and one big party. Most guests only attend the party at the end of the wedding, which is what I did. Some students came over to my house beforehand as they wanted to travel to the wedding together, which was about 3 kilometers away. Also, it turned out, none of them knew how to apply makeup but they all wanted to wear it. So they asked me to help with their makeup. It was like high school homecoming dance all over again.


One of the other teachers offered us a ride in his car so we all headed over to the wedding at around noon (it started at eleven, but guess how long it took three teenage girls to get ready...). Weddings are a chance to eat fancy Cambodian food, but I recommend avoiding anything uncooked as that is the surest way to get a big case of giardia or amoebic dystentary. The food was pretty good.

While my coteachers' bride and the bridesmaids and groomsmen greeted everyone and handed them a pen, my coteacher was making the rounds to cheers everyone and get drunk. When guests are finished eating and enjoying the wedding they write their name on an envelope provided and put money in it, to be deposited in a giant heart-shaped box on the way out. As a reward, you are given a stick of doublemint gum usually. By the end, when the bride and entourage were accepting money envelopes, my coteacher was dragging me onto the dance floor to dance with him in front of the camera. An important part of anyone's wedding is to dance with the barang. I stood there awkwardly, moving around a little, and wishing I had had a few beers. I asked my coteacher, "Don't you want to dance with your bride?" to which he responded, "Yes! I am surprised!" He was very drunk.
Probably the icing on the cake (of which there was none, and this is my chief and only complaint about Cambodian weddings) was watching my coteacher grab the mic from the DJ repeatedly and slur something into it that was so loud and garbled I had literally NO IDEA what he was saying. But it made all the guests really excited and feel like they needed to scream in response, so I guess it had the desired effect.





Since the music at a wedding is crazy-blow-your-eardrums-out loud the party is usually mercifully short. About two hours after our arrival, the same teacher gave us a ride home. My wedding experience was quite enjoyable and the perfect duration. My next experience would not be so brief...