Today we attended Wedding No. 2 which took place at the bride’s house in a suburb of Battambang. Weddings typically last between 1 and 3 days and this wedding was somewhere in the middle: 1,5 day. The duration of the wedding depends on various factors, including the financial resources available to the family.
This was the wedding of one of the technicians who works at Phare Ponleu Selpak. He got married to a girl who worked at Madison, a bar in central Battambang largely frequented by ex-pats (we have been there as well).
Weddings in Cambodia start much earlier than they do back home. Fortunately for us, we managed to arrange to be there from just 8am, which is easier to stomach than the 4am-5am start that some people would have had. We were there just in time to join the groom’s procession into the house. Here is a picture of Wendy just before we joined the procession. Bowls full of tomatoes were thrust into our hands, and we joined the back of the procession. “No! No!” we were told. “The fruit has to go before the pig’s head!”
The procession was heading to the bride’s house, which is where weddings traditionally are supposed to happen. This is because, according to Cambodian custom, the groom goes to live with the bride’s family, and not the other way round. We expect that this is a positive for a culture in which alcohol abuse and domestic violence are problems.
Once inside we sat in a big aisle while the people conducting the wedding said lots of things that we didn’t understand. Fortunately Reaksmey, one of the staff members at PPS, kindly translated for us. It included some special dancers who were employed to proceed down the aisle picking up pieces of fruit that had been part of the procession. Traditionally 36 different varieties of fruit would be selected, although today, in the interests of time, just a handful were picked up.
Interestingly, the definition of fruit was quite broad. Strictly speaking, nobody should be surprised that we were holding tomatoes – after all they are fruit. And lots of the bowls contained real fruit. However other bowls contained biscuits, chocolates, jelly, beer and cigarettes. Do those count as part of your five a day?
We all then went through to a seating area to have some food. We sat at a table with several people from PPS, mostly other technicians and some performers.
Then we continued further into the house for the wedding ceremony itself. It included a ceremony to tie knots around the wrists of the bride and groom, naga weaving (passing around candles to represent protection from Lord Shiva) throwing seeds from a plant at the bride and groom, and the people conducting the wedding unsheathing a sword to represent protection of the couple.
Many people were wearing bright clothes, and the bridal couple seemed to have change into different costumes several times in the day.
After the ceremony most people went home for a bit before coming back for the reception just a short while later. When we returned we discovered that it was raining, which is highly unusual for this time of year. It meant that there was lots of mud to traipse through, but nobody seemed to mind.
There was then plenty of eating, drinking and dancing, much as you would expect with any wedding. At one point a line of people came towards our table chanting, each holding a glass of beer. Chanting, each of them then encouraged Det (one of the people at our table) to drink from the glass they were holding - there must have been about a group of 8 people. It seemed like they all really liked Det and wanted him to have fun.
We all stayed a while longer, but then we left earlier than many people, and very early by the standards of a European wedding – around 3pm. Det kindly drove us back to our hotel.
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