Over the past weekend Judy and I attended a wedding and reception that bordered on the regal. We were flattered to be invited by the owner of this hotel. This family is apparently among the most influential and wealthy families around here. Their eldest son–an assistant to an important local official, maybe the Mayor. We never got it straight–married a local judge who whose social standing probably isn’t too shabby either. The wedding was a mixed Chinese and Thai ceremony, of which we saw the Chinese part which began at 6:30 AM Friday but had to go to school before the Thai part started. The ceremony was in a large hall in the hotel, which seated, we estimate, about 300 guests. An MC explained the what was happening. The ceremony seemed to boil down down to affirmations about food, family,
fortune (as in treasure; much gold on the stage) and future. It seemed to be mostly about the nuts and bolts of putting two individuals and their families together. There was nothing religious about the Chinese part.
That evening, the wedding reception took place the convention center on the university campus. Two thousand five hundred of the guests invited by the families filled the hall and enjoyed a multi-course dinner with drinks. Om the expanse of the lawn outside the hall, 1,500 others, factory workers, city employees, hotel employees and others who apparently came from the district the son or his party represents, also dined before a stage and huge TV screens and a band.
As the guests dined on this sumptuous occasion, the bride and groom strolled down a decoratively-lighted 30 yard red carpet and took to the stage, where they submitted to questions from an MC. This was a mixture of humor and sentiment. The bride and groom soon left the hall stage for an appearance on the outdoor stage where they were again introduced and MC’d. For all the world, that looked like a regal appearance. We could watch it on huge convention type monitors, but watch almost parenthetically, because a popular Thai crooner took our stage and emoted above his keyboard and sang familiar love songs
that the crowd loved. Then a couple of guitar payer-singers performed. At the end of the evening, the bride and groom returned to our stage with their families and expressed their heartfelt sentiment to their families and, get this, thanked the audience for coming!
Thanked us for coming! Thanked us for coming to witness the wedding that makes all Dallas weddings look modest!
Yesterday, we went to a small wedding of a Thai fiend/acquaintance that we like a lot. We arrived just after the monks had chanted about this propitious occasion. Anyhow our friend Veena was marrying an Englishman, Allen, from New Castle, whom we really liked. Theirs was a match made in cyberspace. Allen says he had just purchased his first computer and had just powered up and there, on IE, was Veena in a chat session. Allen was smitten. He figured out how to chat and began regular chats with Veena; he later visited Veena in Thailand a couple of times; and on this his third visit moved here and they married. It was a small Thai wedding in her home . After a meal, the ceremony began with a yodeler leading the guests into the house. It was a family-oriented affair, the monks having left, in which the
couple sat on the floor before a large decorative item. The slightly inebriated grandmother spoke ceremonial words, and guests tied good-luck strings about the couples’ wrists. They then went upstairs with the family and kissed on a bed covered with rose petals. It was
really a fun occasion.
At that wedding we also met another couple who had met on the Internet who are getting married soon in Australia.
We are going to another wedding in BKK soon, the Voravut’s daughter. The Voravuts are catholic.
Wow! Three weddings in a row. I’m about to get wedding fatigue, but am sure it’s better than funeral fatigue. Fifty members of my high school class have passed on. One of my favorite high school friends died of a stroke a week after the reunion, possibly form the shock of
seeing his old classmates these fifty years later, unpersuaded by our assertions that we, the class of ’57 to a person, still look pretty good.
Tags: Thailand