Monday, August 11, 2008

Traditional Thai Wedding





TRADITIONAL THAI WEDDING

A lady in our church came to our home with this wedding invitation asking us if we please will attend the wedding of her brother the coming Friday. We accept it and told her that we will take a few pictures of the wedding for the couple as we are use to do this in our country.

We started the Thursday as part of being the group attending the practice session. We realized that this was a huge wedding as they were preparing for one thousand guests. The next morning at six we took the photos of the venue and all the flowers. At seven we was at the bridegroom mother`s house to have coffee and take the necessary photo of the starting of the traditional Thai wedding. Everyone on his side of the family was gathering there. His bride was also in the house getting dressed, etc before him, not as in our culture.

From there, after a lot of crackers were set alight with a large BANG to announce that a wedding is going to take place. Everyone were standing in a long row in the mainstreet with their presents before getting into their cars to drive to the bride mother`s house where the ceremony would take place. We attended the ceremony which was totally different from what we are use to and was done in a Thai way. A lot of gifts were given by the groom and his parents to the bride and her parents.

From there we went to the school`s hall to have a Christian wedding ceremony. It was more or less what we are use to but with a lot extra Thai traditional things. The bridegroom and some of his family are Christians.

The afternoon at four we attended the wedding function where may be even more than one thousand people showed up and had a meal before leaving straight away. At about 5:30pm the couple moved into the hall with a big show and a new ceremony took place. At about 9pm we left with more than 1000 photos to be sorted and prepared for them before they were leaving the island on Sunday morning at six. When we handed the DVD to them on Saturday night we ate together and were invited to attend a similar wedding the next weekend at Surat Thani (3 hours away by boat). They are going to be re-married at his family`s place the next weekend.

We were handled like VIPs all the time and even being driven around by the bride and groom in the wedding car to get our motorbike where we had left it. It was a wedding that we will never forget.

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