This past weekend I attended a Vietnamese wedding. One of my English friends, who I worked with at ILA, got married to his Vietnamese girlfriend. Since we worked together he has moved back to the UK and she is going with him but he came back to Vietnam to get married. I also stayed with him in London when I went home for Christmas last year and we both support Arsenal so he's a pretty good mate.
Anyway, the good news is that I was specially selected for the gig in an usher style role, like at the Cambodian wedding I went to a few years back and as you can see above this meant I got to wear a really funky gold outfit with matching hat.
The wedding was in the riverside town of Can Tho in the Mekong Delta, about three hours drive from Ho Chi Minh City. We needed to be up early for the wedding on Saturday morning so a group of us caught a bus on the Friday evening after work.
The way it worked is that in the morning the usher party had to be up early to carry trays bearing gifts to the bride's house. You can see the tray I had to carry in the first picture and if you look carefully you will see it is a cooked piglets carcass. We caught a bus from our hotel and at precisely 9am we had to walk down a street carrying our trays which we then handed over to the bridesmaids (see below).
After this we are invited into the house by the brides parents. The groom then went up stairs with the other guests we then waited downstairs for them to have the ceremony. 20 minutes later they came down and were married!
After this, at about 11am, we went and got changed into smart-causal wear and attended a celebratory lunch at the hotel where they were staying . There were about 200 people there and an expectation to drink lots to which I happily obliged.
It was a fantastic day and experience. Something really different and a privilege to be part of. The golden outfit was nice. Despite being a bit tight and giving me a man cleavage it had some slits down the sides to allow air circulation and was surprisingly comfortable. The actual name of the costume I was wearing is an Ao Dai. It's the Vietnamese traditional dress and if you would like to read me click on the link below.
After the lunch we went back to Ho Chi Minh City. It was a long journey after such a heavy lunch but I got some sleep so it was ok. On the Sunday evening we then had another party at a hotel which involved more drinking and eating. Again great fun. It was a fantastic weekend.
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