Getting Married in Laos

For my whole mission whenever a Lao person saw me and found out that I spoke Lao, generally the first reaction was something along the lines of “You should go to Laos and get married!” Once I found out that I would actually be coming, people got a little more serious about it and some that hadn’t mentioned it before fell into suit with everyone else.

When I first arrived in Vientiane, Elder Luangrath proceeded to introduce to someone in the branch who I have to assume he thought was a worthy partner. He watched, delighted, at the bottom of the stairs as she showed me up to where Sunday school would be taking place. Since then he’s made sure to invite her to lunch every time I go with them.

But that’s beside the point because the wedding I went to on Saturday wasn’t actually mine. (and mom sighs in relief)

We got in to the hotel, took off our shoes (of course) and sat down on the floor in a big group of people surrounding the bride and groom (also on the floor) who are sitting across from some guy with some sort of authority. Between this guy and them were two Christmas tree-looking things with a bunch of flowers and strings hanging off them. I won’t try to explain the symbolism of the ceremony, mostly because I have no idea what any of it is.

So the guy did some singing/chanting, which I actually think was really beautiful. I think once that was done they’re considered married. Then (still sitting on the ground) everyone there lines up and ties a piece of yarn around the wrist of the bride and groom, leaving behind a blessing. Once you’ve tied the yarn around their wrists, the bride gives you 50.000 kip. (I’d be much more excited about waiting in lines at wedding receptions if I knew I was getting 8 bucks at the end of it, maybe we should adopt that tradition in the US.)

At first I wasn’t going to because I didn’t know the people getting married, and I could tell that their arms were already super tired from holding them up for the entire ceremony so I didn’t want to make them wait any longer before they could take a break. But then when the line of people kneeling and waiting for their turn was basically gone, I decided I might as well for the full experience (and 50.000k isn’t too bad either). The people getting married were actually already married in the US and they just decided to have a traditional wedding while they were here this summer. The groom is Lao, but the bride is from Guam so she was happy to speak English with someone even though she had never met me before.

Then they fed us lunch. I could have filled up with that for the rest of the evening, except that I knew that there would also be a dinner that night with a lot more food. During the afternoon, we were joined at our table by a mother and daughter who the Luangrath’s knew (and I had apparently met some of their relatives in California). There were a few more people that came to the table at dinner time—some of which drank more than others.

The food was great. At one time during dinner, I noticed a little group of kids pointing at me and laughing. My first assumption, since I was one of 2 white people there (the other was the father of the bride) and since I currently have a beard, was that they just thought I was a weirdey and they wanted to show their friends the freak at the wedding.  Thankfully I recognized one of the pointing kids as one of the students at the CEA that I’ve taught a few times. (They probably still thought I was a weirdy)

So, when everyone is basically finished eating they have the dance with just the bride and groom and then open the dance floor up to everyone, as you might expect. After a few songs, some of the family at our table started telling the girl there that she should get up and dance. She didn’t really want to (usually don’t like doing things that drunk people tell me to do either).  She did have a valid excuse of not having anyone to dance with. “Dance with the white guy!” psych. Bad excuse. I was all for it, I wanted the full experience, but I realize why she would be hesitant to dance with the weird white guy.

Lao people dance a little differently than we do in America. First of all, you don’t touch your partner, ever, the whole time, at all. Next, you face each-other with your hands out in front of your body waving slowly back and forth with your palms open. The circle of people generally moves around slowly, and the way each person moves may or may not have anything to do with the beat of the music. I felt so bad for my partner once we had been dancing for a while: I think everyone in the room was watching the tall scraggly-looking white guy who had no idea how to dance. I’m pretty sure the videographer was filming me the whole time, and if it wasn’t the whole time I know for sure that he was filming me when we were on his side of the floor. Once the dance was over, I bowed to her (like you’re supposed to) and we walked back to the table. I apologized (again) for all the attention we had and for not being able to dance very well. Then I finally found out what her name was (Khounmy) and now I will probably never see her again in my life.

No matter how awesome the wedding party was, I’ll never be able to afford a production that huge.