The Weddin’

Weddings. The merging of two lives. In the West it’s an expensive day that somehow manages to come off as cheap to everyone else. Paper napkins, disposable cameras, and the Funky Chicken. Vows are exchanged, fathers hide their tears, and little girls dance adorably atop their adult partners shoes.

If you’ve been to one you’ve been to a hundred.

Over the last few years I have been lucky enough to have been party to a variety of different matrimonial ceremonies; from the regal banquets of India to the ancient dynastic rituals of the Vietnamese, and, more recently, the country traditions of the Khmer people of Cambodia.

Far from the plastic ballrooms of some sterile hotel or country club, these affairs are held in the fields, ankle deep in the dirt between planting seasons. Fittingly the same paddy fields that the two young lovers would have worked in, played in, and eloped to in the nights leading up to the big day.

The lovers in question, Bong Poul (Mr.Poul) and Srey Neang (Ms.Neang) were some of my oldest friends in the country, having worked closely with both since my first day.

Poul, a slender young man of 17, babyfaced, but an adult in all Cambodian respects, he was transformed before my eyes from a boy into a man the day his older brother was killed in a motorcycle crash. As the eldest male, he was required to shave his head to perform the Buddhist funerary rites. Like Michael Corleone’s broken jaw in The Godfather, it seemingly marked his transformation from the innocence of youth to the hard realities of life in a place like this.

Neang, a beautiful, petite young woman of 18, had come to run the kitchen of a guesthouse I briefly worked. Her girl clique cooked the food and cleaned the rooms of the dive-iest dive bar and hostel Cambodia might have ever seen (which could put it in the running for dive-iest worldwide). While not having ever spoken a word, mostly due to her lack of English and my basic Khmer, we still managed to weather a long monsoon season with little food and even less money.

Throughout that gray, hungry time the one constant was Poul, always bringing some small amount of money or food to Neang and her friends – a distinctly Khmer way of blending romance with survival before tearing out of the lot on his souped-up scooter.

When the brightly colored red envelope finally arrived in my hands it was not much of a surprise. Their romance and rainy-day liaisons were the worst kept secret on the beach. In the judgmental eyes of the older folks it was time he made an honest woman out of her.

Khmer weddings are held in a swirl of mysticism and magic. Fortune tellers divine an auspicious date using tea leaves, bones, and the astrological dates relevant to the bride and groom. No month that has less than 30 days, no date that shares a birthday or death-day relevant to the families, and finally, once all this has been accounted for the date is divined and a gift of psychoactive betel nuts is exchanged – sealing the deal.

Ancient Khmer myth has it that the first marriage was overseen by the Buddha. Four men, each skilled in a particular way: swimming, shooting, fortune telling, and magic, had gone to see a beautiful maiden and make her a wife. While traveling the fortune teller told stories of her beauty, describing her in detail to the other men despite having never laid eyes on her.

On seeing the woman bathing by a river the four men were instantly smitten, but suddenly a giant bird swooped from the sky and grabbed the young woman (sounds about right…).

The shooter quickly drew his bow, firing a barrage of bamboo arrows into the bird causing it to drop the poor maiden into the river. The swimmer rushed to her side, but pulling her from the water he realized it was too late, she had died.

Khmer protection and health tattoos. Copyright Joe Wassermann

The magician then knelt over her, summoning all his powers he began chanting and pleading with the spirits to breathe life back into her.

When she awoke, surrounded by four suitors, each of whom was more in love than the last, she was overwhelmed. Each man vied for her hand, but bringing the matter before the Buddha he proclaimed in his wisdom that the swimmer, the first to touch her, should have her as his wife, but that the other men should receive gifts of betel as symbols of gratitude.

As such, no Khmer wedding is arranged without ceremonial gifts of this strange stimulant.

• Read More about Betel here – The Paan Man

When given, the invitations are given liberally. The more the merrier. There is little of the nitpicking and table planning of a Western affair, instead, things are an interesting mix of ancient ceremony and raucous drunken karaoke-jam. Those expats who received the gilded envelopes smiled a knowing smile, giddy in the knowledge that in their hand was access to a party so strange and unusual that they would not soon forget it.

The reciprocity comes in the form of a smaller envelope inside the larger one – the donation to the new couple. It will be delivered later, in a formal ceremony surrounded by monks and stifling incense, but for now it is a small price to pay to be wined and dined in a rice-field on the hazy mine-filled border between Vietnam and Cambodia.

With the day fast approaching the Khmer and Western ladies of our beach community clumped into groups of giggles and set off into town to be decked out by foreign seamstresses and dressmakers. Miles of colored silks and fabrics will be laid out and draped around them before being handed over to an army of sewing machines to create the marital uniform. Shoes, makeup, hair styling, all the things not generally necessary or easy in a place like rural Cambodia become important overnight – everyone wanting to look their best…except the guys.

This motley crew of bearded miscreants and malcontents, long ago having ditched/pawned their one good shirt, are barely able to keep themselves fed, let alone clothed. As such, some gentle cajoling by the fairer sex is needed at the last minute to procure long sleeve shirts, shiny shoes, and in a pinch – a Tuxedo (t-shirt).

At. Mien. Fucks.

To be concluded. ‘The Weddin’ Pt.2′