We got the chance to attend a wedding of one of Jenny's friends from Vietnam, Dao. She lives outside of Soc Trang, which is a small city in the Mekong Delta, which I never would have visited if there hadn't of been a wedding there. It is a very sleepy town and the only thing that stays open past 10 pm is the internet cafe (which closes at 11). Her house was a 20 minute drive from the town. Let me just say, Vietnamese weddings are nuts. I say this for a couple reasons, but first off because they last 3 days. There are 3 days of ceremonies until the bride and groom are officially married, she can leave her family and move into her husband's family's house. It starts out with a party at the bride's family's house, which involved a lot of eating, drinking Saigon beers (mostly the men), and an mc with a microphone singing songs with an accompanying keyboard player, who only really played the same techno beat at faster and slower tempos. There was nothing vegetarian for me to eat so an older Vietnamese lady kept feeding me candy and orange soda all night. Literally she was feeding me. If at any point in the night I wasn't holding either a piece of candy or my mug of orange soda, she would unwrap a candy and put it in my hand. Eventually the groom came to the house and brought some vegetarian pho (noodle soup) which was unbelievably sweet! I was already really full (and a little ill) from all the sugar but it was delicious anyways. At the end of the night Dao asked if we would sing a song before we left. Since no one was really paying attention to the mc, we thought we might be able to slip in and out without anyone really noticing us singing. Unfortunately Dao asked Jenny to make an announcement (on the microphone), which she then translated into Vietnamese for everyone (on the microphone). So that's how we got everyone's attention. We decided on "Ain't No Mountain High Enough" because we knew the chorus and one verse, and figured we could just keep repeating the same verse (no one would understand it anyways). After the song was over, everyone (everyone meaning Dao and the mc, who turned out to be her high school teacher) insisted we keep singing, and the next logical song was "Joy to the World," the one about Jeremiah and his bullfrog. We must have sang the whole song through 5 or 6 times. Then the mc and another guy got us to dance with them. The one guy started a conga line, but it was only him, Jenny, and me in line. All the other guests were just sitting and watching us dance and no one joined in. I have to say it was a pretty magical experience.
The second day was a luncheon reception at a restaurant, where the bride and groom did all the "traditional" wedding stuff, like cut the cake (which no one ate), pour champagne (cherry soda) into a cascading fountain and take obligatory wedding photos. The oddest part was that not a single guest at the party, except Jenny, Katie and I, was watching the bride and groom. The food had already come out and they were all busy eating. Also no one took any pictures besides us and the wedding photographer. When all the food was gone, the guests just got up and left. It was literally an eat and run type situation.
The last day of wedding was the big one, where the bride leaves her family's house, goes to the groom's family's house, and they are officially married. The first ceremony started at 6 am, meaning we woke up at 4:30. Before we got in the taxi we stopped for some street food breakfast. We tried this hot, creamy, super sweet soup with wide, flat noodles in it. The lady served it out of the cooking pot into small plastic bags, tied up with a rubber band, which we bit a hole into and sucked the soup out of. It was amazingly delicious. Since the ceremony started at 6 am, we arrived at the party by 9 am, and food (and beer) was served. There was a little competition between the older men's table and the older women's table over who could cheers the loudest. Vietnamese cheers is mot, hai, ba yoooo!, which means 1, 2, 3 drink, and I'm still not sure who won. This picture is from day 3:
Hold on, a three person conga line was a "pretty magical experience"...for who??
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