Lao Wedding, Friday, January 11th, 2018

First post of the new year! My New Year’s resolution is to be more consistent on my blog posts, which I have already fallen a bit behind on. So here is the next post. From here on out I promise the posts will come whenever something fun or exciting happens, and I will not wait so long to write them.

Mom teaches English class to the government officials, and one of her students invited us to his brother’s wedding, (apparently it is good luck to have a foreigner at your wedding) so that is what happened today! It was exciting to be going to an authentic Lao wedding.

We arrived at around 8:00 am at the grooms house. When we got there Khongxay (my mother’s student who invited us) greeted us. Inside the house there was a “Baci” ceremony in progress. The Baci ceremony consists of kneeling around a structure called a “Pha Khuan” which looks a bit like a tree. The Pha Khuan has marigolds around the top of it (marigolds are very important to the Buddhist religion), and sticks coming out of it which have multicoloured string attached. The next step in the Baci ceremony is taking the strings from the sticks and tying them around the hands of the people around you.

Lao people believe that humans are a union of thirty-two organs and each has a spirit to protect them. The spirits sometimes wander outside the body which causes unbalance of the soul, this might lead to an illness. The tying of the string represents tying the 32 spirits to the body and putting them back in harmony. It signifies good luck and prosperity. Mom and I got lots of strings tied around our wrists, and we both were so overwhelmed by the kindness of the people. Khonxay translated what some of them said as they tied the strings, and they were all along the lines of: “We wish you good health and a happy future.”

After the Baci ceremony, it is then that you go to the Bride’s house, where the actual wedding ceremony takes place. Khongxay drove us to the main road, and from there we walked with the rest of the attendees for a few minutes until we reached her house. When we arrived we immediately went inside for another Baci ceremony, which would signify the couple’s union. It was really interesting to see how different the Lao wedding was from weddings back home. Some people, especially in places like Thailand, have adopted our style of weddings. But this was definitely nothing like a western-culture wedding.

We then got lots more strings tied around our wrists. I think I counted at least 30 of them!

After the ceremony, we headed outside for lunch. It was quite the event, and there were lots of people. There was also a live band and lots of Lao dancing. The food was delicious as well. They had sticky rice, steamed rice, and other Lao delicacies like papaya salad and Laap. Even Mr. Khamlai (who is the deputy governor of Lao Ngam district) made an appearance.

Mom and I also tried our hand at the dancing. You mostly just move your feet and sway while rotating your hands. There doesn’t seem to be too many rules to it actually, which is nice.

After a while (and when the wedding was drawing to an end), Mom and I were feeling quite tired and stuffed from all the yummy food. So we waved goodbye and set off on our motorcycle back home. The Lao wedding was for sure an experience I will not forget, I really felt like I was in a whole different world.

*Word of the Day: Deng Nan (Pronounced like how it looks), it means wedding.