We are coming to the end of Wedding Season in Cambodia. Most weddings are held November-February as
these are the coolest and driest months.
Since moving here, my attitude about Cambodian weddings has not been
positive. Weddings are typically held
at families’ homes. Each family puts up
a giant pink and yellow tent in the road outside their home. It’s frustrating to turn down a street only
to find that it’s been barricaded by a wedding tent. Also, to avoid the heat, wedding ceremonies
are held early in the morning, and wedding receptions are held later in the
evening. Sometimes, people include a
loud speaker that broadcasts the festivities to the neighborhood. This can be a bit frustrating at 5am when I
am trying to sleep, and it sounds like the wedding is taking place in our
house.
This weekend my attitude about weddings changed
significantly as we got to attend the wedding of our dear coworker, Poa. Typically the morning ceremony is only for family
and close friends, but she invited us to come because she wanted us to
experience a Khmer wedding. Her wedding
day was a little bittersweet for us because her now husband is Japanese, and
she’s moving to Japan in a couple weeks, but it was a really special day as
well. 
We arrived
at the pink and yellow tent outside of her house at 6:30am. Her family is as gracious as she is, so there
was no loud speaker blasting into the neighborhood. Around 7am, all the guests lined up two-by-
two a few hundred yards from the tent.
Each of us carried a golden platter of something. Most people carried fruit, some people
carried beer, but Alan and I carried rice cakes wrapped with banana
leaves. The bride and groom led the
procession into the tent, and we all placed the platters in the small room
where the ceremony was held. When we
entered the tent, we each received a small envelope filled with money (a few
hundred riel, the equivalent of about 6 cents).
We think this is to bring luck to the bride and groom, that they would
be prosperous in their marriage. After
that, the bride and groom continued the wedding ceremony with their parents and
close family, and the rest of us got to eat breakfast! Breakfast was a traditional Khmer meal of
“Bobo,” a rice and meat soup. It was
really tasty. Mine even had a little purple
octopus/squid-thing in it, and it tasted good too. The lady sitting next to me helpfully
answered a lot of my questions about Khmer weddings. After we finished eating, Alan and I went
into the small ceremony room and watched some of the ceremony. They gave each other rings and put wreathes
of jasmine flowers around each other’s necks.
Lovely. 
After the main ceremony ended, we thought maybe the morning
ceremony was over, but the lady who had been sitting next to me at breakfast
came up to me and told me we should stay for the “hair-cutting” ceremony. We stayed for the ceremony, and we are so
glad we did. Before the ceremony, the
bridal party came and sat down in the middle of the tent, and we all gathered
around. A male and female comedy team
came out and did a routine. We enjoyed
this part because we could actually understand some of what they were saying
and understood the humor too! 
After
that, the parents of the bride stood behind the bride and groom. The father pretended to cut the bride and
groom’s hair, and the mother sprayed perfume on their hair. Then, the groom’s parents did the same. After that, several guests went up and did
the same thing, including us! It was so
fun! A teacher at our school explained
to me today that the haircutting ceremony symbolizes the bride and groom
starting a new life together, the cutting away of the unlucky, and starting
only with the lucky.
I also must say I am a little jealous of brides in
Cambodia. In the course of their wedding
day, they wear about 7 different beautiful outfits! Of course, the grooms have to change into
matching outfits as well.
The evening reception
was fun too, a little bit more like a reception in the U.S., although I’ll take
Khmer dancing over the electric slide any day. J
--Katy
