Last week I had the opportunity to attend the wedding of a distant relative, and I was super excited to experience a new aspect of Khmer culture. According to tradition, the wedding was planned and hosted by the bride and her parents, so I also got to visit a part of the country I haven’t seen before.
It’s normal to start early in the morning so the partying can last all day, although in this case they did an abbreviated celebration with few guests because of Covid. The wedding was scheduled to begin at 7am, but it was 2 ½ hours away and we arrived late. This wasn’t an issue though, since the bride and groom were getting their pictures taken and weren’t ready to receive guests. While we waited, we went down the road to grab some breakfast (for 50 cents!) before the ceremony started.
The ceremony started at 8:30. We all gathered in the living room around the offerings presented to the ancestors. Again, they skipped a few things, but these are the Buddhist customs I got to see:
- The officiant chanted while offerings were presented. The bride and groom ceremoniously waved some of the items pictured above.
- After waving the offerings, the guests threw seeds at the couple to symbolize blessings, not unlike the American tradition of throwing rice.
- As the chanting and more seed throwing continued, the guests passed three candles around the couple seven times, also signifying a blessing.
- The ceremony finished with the tying of the hands. This is done in two ways: the bride and groom have their wrists tied with a red cord, and then receive gifts of money from guests in their joint hands.
After the ceremony, the bride and groom changed to Western wedding clothes, and some of the guests and family changed clothes also. It’s common for the bride and groom to spend thousands of dollars on several different outfits to wear throughout the wedding celebration, though in this case they only wore two outfits. Of course, they got lots of pictures taken!
Around 9:30 we had a meal, although we weren’t hungry because we had just had breakfast! We were there for less than 3 hours altogether. Here’s the best part – When our aunt and uncle dropped me off at home, they casually pointed out that their nephew (the groom) lives just around the corner. What! I knew that the newlyweds would live in Phnom Penh because of their work, but I was shocked that they’re our neighbors. Josiah and Malachi and I got to meet them a few days later when we were out for a walk, and hopefully we’ll get to know them better!