Khmer Wedding

On the 10th I finally got to go to a Khmer wedding. I was hoping for a night of eating on the street in one of the tents they set up (see picture below). But this one was inside one of the wedding halls.

So we arrived at the Wedding hall and were greeted by the Bride and Groom, got our picture taken, and received our wedding favor. I am not sure what to do with mine...it is a cell phone charm. But this charm is not beads or something small but a little stuffed animal. It is was not a surprise to receive as most people have some type of charm hanging off their phones.

main entrance

 When we got inside we were seated and the food was brought out. We started with appetizer plates filled with deep friend fish (heads and tails still on), cashew nuts, and other various hard to identify dishes. I picked and choice carefully what I wanted in my mouth. The next course was a delicious salad with squid and shrimp, it is the picture shown below.

 Next came our fish...and as you can see it is still being cooked and you have to pick the bones out. Picking bones out of food here is very usual and I have started to learn the art of eating around bones and cleaning them off. If you ever travel here you have to try to fish...you don't have to eat the skin I always peel that off but their fish here is excellent!

 After the fish we received our rice, plan and fried, with soup. The final course was coconut milk with tapioca pudding. It was all very good. Once you are finished eating you can stay and wait for the cake to be cut and the dancing but who knows how long you have to wait. It "started" at 4:30 and we didn't get there till after 5:30 and there were still people coming in when we left right before 7pm. We had a chance to say hi to some of our other staff members we saw. I loved seeing everyone so dressed up, but you can't always recognize the girls! They wear tons of make-up and fake eye lashes. They out dress our weddings by a lot. Before we left we dropped our card with money into the giant gold shaped heart box. You use the envelope your invitation comes in (your name is already on it) to put money in for the new couple. They have no wedding showers and they use the money to start their new life. No room for Hallmark here...kind of nice not buying a wedding card.

With the Bride and Groom

The bride and groom also change clothes multiple times through out the day depending on how much money you have. Which is why they have a t-shirt here that says "no money, no honey". I told one of my Khmer guy friends, who was lamenting about being single, not having money, and wanting to get married, that he could marry a Western girl because you don't have to pay the family anything to get married like you do here. He told me that was true but Western girls would be expensive to have as a wife because she would like to eat cheese.