Let's Get Married 9.29.13

We woke up at five thirty for the wedding and headed out to the countryside at 6 am. The wedding was held in a rural village where my host mom grew up. The rural Mekong Delta is usually inhabited by small shack-like homes with farms in the back. Although the house for the wedding was small, it was very modern, especially for the countryside. There were at least four small homes on the extended family's grounds, with farmland in between and the river behind it all. We could hear music blaring from the main road. By the time we made it to the reception area, we could no longer hear each other speak because the music was so loud. There were more than 70 people sitting and eating from large platters of food. It was 7 am. Laura and I received several stares as we were the only non-Vietnamese people in attendance. We were also the only young people in traditional garb. The two of us, our host mom and the elders dressed all the way up while everyone else wore Western clothing. The ceremony took place in a sitting room in one of the houses, right next to the already active reception. The elders, Laura, Dung, myself and 4 random cousins watched the actual wedding. Everyone else continued with the meal. Were we intruding? Probably. Our host mom wanted us front and center to take pictures. She did not seem to notice the peculiarity of our positioning. The elder women sat on one side while the elder men sat on the other. An altar was set up in the middle against the wall, adorn with candles, flowers, buddhas are ornamentation. The color scheme was red and gold. The bride looked beautiful. She had on a traditional red and gold dress as well so yes we were wearing the same color scheme and design. Oops. It was clear that the goal of her facial makeup was to make her appear as white as possible. I wonder how vigorously she applied whitening cream in the months prior. The photo-shopped pictures hanging around the reception featured a whitened bride as well. She was very stoic and hardly smiled. Both she and the groom seemed as though they were just going through the motions of the ceremony for traditions sake. They did not seem to be enjoying themselves. The ceremony was not too long. There were several rituals of bowing, drinking from a communal cup of something, probably tea, that the elders had also sipped from, the fathers lighting candles on the altar, and more. There was an MC, not a religious figure although it was a Buddhist wedding. At one point, the groom placed jewelry on the bride: several bracelets, a necklace, earrings, a headband, and finally a ring. The bride reciprocated with a ring only. There was no kiss or jumping of a broom to signify the end. It was just over all of a sudden. We went out into the reception where the others were miraculously still working on their food. We received endless courses, each with a different meat featured. There was pork with salt, pepper, and lime, beef ragu, an entire chicken, noodles, bread, rice, spring rolls, fruit, etc. It was 8 am. We had a lengthy photo shoot after with the bride and groom although we were never introduced to them and they did not talk to us. I did some karaoke after. There were not any American songs so I sang acapella. I started with Monica’s Angel of Mine, then L.O.V.E. from The Parent Trap. They asked me to sing a song I could dance to and put the Vietnamese instrumentals back on. I was not interested in making up words to a random beat so I did some simple two-steps instead. Some old guy came up and danced with me, followed by a group of middle-aged women. Everyone was cheering, they seemed pretty excited to have me up there, so excited that they did not let me sit down for a while. I finally convinced them to let me sit and the women led me to their table, directly in front of the speakers. They kept yelling at me in Vietnamese. Even if I spoke the language I could not have responded because it was so loud. A younger guy came up and tried to translate by yelling directly into my ear. My ear drum began to vibrate. I decided to move. On our way to the back of the reception, we were offered tiny shots of “wine” by a group of young adults. We yelled the toast: “Mot Hai Ba Yo” (1, 2, 3 bottoms up) and discovered that it was rice liquor -_- and then reverted back to drinking 7UP. We went into our mom’s house, which was the separate from the reception. The music was at a more reasonable level here. We encountered two honks, Binh Minh and Binh Anh, ages 2 and 3. We found out that they usually live in the guest house back in Can Tho but had been in the countryside to help with the wedding. They were also planning on moving to Virginia, where their father worked once they got their visas back. We played with them until around 11 and then we headed back home. I was glad to leave because one of the older guys seemed to think I was interested in him. He had tried to dance with me earlier then he thought the kid’s suitcases were mine. He picked them up and tried to lead me to his house which was on the way to our driver’s car. He led me way in front of everyone else and every time I stopped to wait for them to catch up, he pushed me forward. Right before I’d made it to the car, he stopped in front of a hammock and gestured for me to sit there. I went to the car instead. He was still staring at me as we drove off. Gross. We arrived at home around high noon and had lunch. Then we went to Co-op Mart, a store similar to a Super Target, to get bread and more sauce and noodles for Italian night. We had not planned for the extended family to be there as well. Laura and I had a swell time cooking dinner. We didn’t have a regular oven so we used the chicken rotisserie oven to bake the vegetable casserole. We dipped the eggplant in egg then layered eggplant, spaghetti sauce, parmesan, shredded cheese, corn bread crumbs and zucchini in a pan. It just fit into the oven. We made garlic bread with melted butter and chopped garlic. The spaghetti was pre-seasoned, as you can’t buy basil or oregano here. We added salt, pepper, beef and corn. Dinner was so very good. Grandma was especially excited about the garlic bread. Binh Anh loved the noodles. She spent the entire meal trying to pick them up with chopsticks. The vegetable casserole was a hit too. From now on if I make spaghetti I’m going to stick to a baked vegetable sauce. It goes great on the noodles. After dinner, Laura and I decided to meet up with most of the other students at Karaoke Queen. Neither of us was particularly in the mood for karaoke but after two days, we missed our friends immensely and couldn’t bear to spend one more night without them. I’m so glad that we went. Brittany’s host dad owned the place and it was a classy joint. I knew it was going to be a good night when I saw that we had VIP room 4444. Basically everyone was there, including some random friends of someone’s host sister. Perhaps the greatest performance was the Spice Girls “Wannabe.” Brittany, Leah and I headed that show. We spent the night singing and debriefing each other about our weekends. There was so much love around the room. Time flew by then we had to hustle home before the guard dogs were let out.