A khmer wedding

Like visiting Angkor Wat my first invitation to a Khmer wedding came late. Ratha works as a local expert for GIZ at the Hospital and got married last weekend in Kampot, he was the first (& probably last!) Cambodian to invite me to their wedding. I leapt at the opportunity because although I have sworn against ever going to a wedding again on philosophical & ethical grounds, an overseas wedding falls under section 3.2 of the special circumstances amendment.

So the first thing to say is that my only experience of Khmer weddings to date has been the noise pollution & road obstructions - they are generally located in a makeshift tent construction blocking major thoroughfares and are really quite noisy, like dust, sweat & heat exhaustion they tend to only happen in the dry season (at any auspicious time of the day). They are bling affairs & I was very concerned about the dress code, in case you haven't noticed I am not a size zero (as most Cambodian women are) and when I wear makeup I look like a drag queen, so the sequins and frills of traditional Cambodian wedding dress-code filled me with dread.

Thankfully N (x-ref 'The kindness of Cambodians' blog) was J's & my cultural ambassador for the weekend & she said western dress, moderate makeup and comfortable shoes was allowed. However Janice hadn't opted for the comfortable shoes and Kampot appeared to suffer a severe shortage of Tuk Tuks on the evening of the wedding hence we arrived from our guest house with one of our party limping barefoot through the foliage to the side of the entrance rather than the more traditional red carpet route.

In the photos below (a combination of mine & E's) I have failed to convey the vast array of outfits modeled by bride & groom. Also impossible to convey is the stifling (unseasonal) heat or the wall of sound. 

In my limited knowledge & experience a khmer wedding (reception) goes something like this;

• Guests arrive - start time flexible & not necessarily kept to, they find their way by following the palpable vibrating bass & when closer deafening music of wedding band & mega-amp
• Bride & Groom with there families sit outside under a huge heart shaped arch with a massive photo-shopped picture of the happy couple, greeting all guests - this appears to go on for most of the night with outfit changes for the happy couple being the only release from reception duty
• Barangs are treated like royalty
• Tables with 8 seats fill up and then are served when a full complement has been achieved food is served - I had been warned about intestines and other such delicacies with associated  gastrointestinal badness but the food was absolutely delicious. (and anyway noodle soup with intestine, liver, lung and guess the anatomical part has become my favoured breakfast)
• Beer is drunk diluted to homeopathic concentration with ice
• Dogs wonder around foraging through the increasing pile of food debris on the floor
• Everyone gives their envelopes of money as a present to the 'accountancy' table or groom
• Street kids beg used cans and left over food - soft hearted NGO workers give them full cans (of Fanta not beer, although alcohol is probably a lot better for them than the e-numbers in the fluorescent green Fanta) and bags of food until one of the waiter shouts at us and hits the children with a big stick
• Some guests eat and drink their fill & just leave
• Most guest stay to watch the "Cutting the fruit" ceremony - like cutting our cake our cultural ambassador informs us
• Bride & Groom in their umpteenth but last outfit walk around some fruit on a table
• Barangs are dragged to stand (pride of place) close to the parents
• Petals are thrown
• Party string-spray is sprayed
• Fruit is fed to the parents
• Champagne is shared by the couple
• An apple is eaten (x-ref Lady & the Tramp spaghetti scene)
• First dance AKA humiliate the Barangs (unfortunately no photos exist of this and even if they did I certainly wouldn't blog them. Drunken friend of Ratha gets up on the stage and thanks the foreigners for coming and says to bless the wedding we must dance. Dazed and confused initially J & I slow dance with each other next to the bride & groom until two unwilling drunken males are dragged by mother of bride - quite literally - on to the dance floor AKA main road to Kep and are forced against their will to dance with us. J - now quite crippled by her 'Beautiful' but not comfortable shoes - proceeds to repeatedly step on her young suitors winkle-pickers, whilst my reluctant dance partner crushes me with his two left feet holding me at arms length by my elbows. Anyone who knows me will know that dancing at weddings is something I only ever do with enough alcohol in my system to induce amnesia requiring photographic evidence as proof/reminder or pike-jumping off a stage to Fame when I am 9 years old. Drunken friend of Ratha was thrilled and there were plenty of thumbs up in our direction. J by this stage has bleeding feet & is distracted by the pain. My pain is more psychological so I do what any Wilson family member would do & tried to strike up a conversation with my dance partner. Despite attempts in khmer, english & sign language I was unsuccessful. It was a very long song the band sung that first dance. After an age it finally came to an end & in perfect english my dance partner thanked me for the dance & then he & his friend ran off the dance floor giggling like girls or in these parts like Cambodian men.
• Traditional Cambodian dancing in an anti-clockwise fashion around a table with a pile of fruit on it - if only the Barangs could have escaped as quickly as their reluctant dance partners but our humiliation was not quite over and we had to endure more dancing whilst sober. I can't bloody do it either, it looks easy but walking around a table whilst doing stuff with your hands that represents an opening lotus flower is a lot harder than it looks. Meanwhile E looks on with her boss, she  suggested to him that  they should join us & share the pain. A direct order from her boss kept her seated!
• As the dancing kicks off & J's feet gently weep we decide to make our exit - leaving the wedding to the increasing drunken men and their long suffering wives
• Ratha's brother bundles us into his car for a lift home just as the drunken friend of Ratha gets back on stage with the microphone declaring that "the foreigners need to come back immediately & dance some more! If it wasn't culturally completely inappropriate I would have given Ratha a big hug at this point.

The following morning at the start of our 11 hour bus trip home we drove past (or technically over) the location of the wedding party & waved to a tired looking Ratha & his bride with family stacking chairs & tables and at the start of their hopefully long journey together.

N, me & J - an island of underdressed-under made-up-ness

This fails to capture the heart-shaped arch entrance but after N shouted at the camera man to switch off the lamp it is at least not back-lit 

J's dress complimenting with the bride & grooms outfit of the moment

The kids prior to the stick hitting incident

Our table buddies - the one of the right never cracked a smile for the entire meal. They left after eating hence missing J's & my dancing humiliation - surely that would have brought a Mona Lisa smile to her face!

Moments before the shouting and big stick

This photo was taken to demonstrate the rubbish but on closer inspection it also demonstrates the Cambodian males habit of not only using all the ground as a bin but also their urinal - this also drives me crazy but I'm sure Freud would've just said I had penis envy

Walking around a table with fruit

Location - half of main road from Kampot to Kep

My foot after two left feet had been all over them for what must have surely been a 15 minute slow song