Cambodian Wedding

 Today was a first.  It's a long, drawn out story how we got invited to a wedding where the groom, who is a generations deep west Sonoma County Italian-Irish Catholic from Occidental, married a first-generation immigrant girl from Cambodia.  

No.  She was not a mail order bride.  How the bride and her family got to the United States is a story all unto itself.  Cambodia was a place they escaped from.  It's not a pretty story.

The bride and groom met while they were both in high school.  They were both in band class. 

It was very interesting and educational how they blended the two cultures together.  For starters, the groom's family is your typical west-county-red-neck-cowboy-clan.  Ford pickups with gun racks and NRA stickers is par for the course with the groom's family.  They also showed up in jeans, boots, and cowboy hats.  This is NOT a slam against the groom's family.  My own family resembles them quite a bit.  I understand them completely.  

The bride's family is from Cambodia.  Many of them did not speak English.  I have to admit that I am totally ignorant of Cambodian wedding traditions.  I got schooled.  For starters, Cambodian weddings have very ornate wedding clothing.  They change their clothes several times throughout the evening.  It was very interesting to see the red necks don traditional Cambodian dress.  It was clumsy but cute.  The Cambodian wedding garb was ill-fitting as Asian men are much smaller in stature than their American counterparts.  The groom's family of white men of European decent were busting out of their Cambodian shirts - literally.  The white honkeys were good sports, but openly admitted they felt like sausages and could not wait to get into clothing that fitted more loosely was more comfortable.

Then it was the Cambodian tradition of the couple coming around to each table.  The guests have either a red or a white envelope.  There is a little game each table plays with the bride and groom before the guests hand over the envelope, which is a cash gift for the couple.  

The dancing was also interesting.  The Cambodians all dance in a circle with very distinctive flicks of their wrists and hands.  It took me NO TIME to figure it out and join right in.  At first I thought, WTF are they doing?  After I studied for a few minutes, I got the gist of it and blended in on the dance floor. 

Then there were the party favors.  The mother of the groom is also a beekeeper, so each person got a little jar of organic Sonoma County honey.  The bride's Cambodian family came around with an item I was not sure of.  I openly admitted I was completely ignorant of Cambodian wedding customs - and that I was open to being educated on their culture.  A picture of the favor is below.  I asked about the meaning of the favor as I truly wanted to understand.  A VERY Cambodian lady with eyes of somebody who was so proud to share her culture with a dumb-ass white woman like myself told me to hang it from my rear-view mirror in my car.  I will never forget the look of pride in her eyes as she told me about Cambodian wedding customs.  

For me, it was an honor to be invited to such a diverse celebration of cultures.  Nobody would ever put several-generations-deep-west-county-red-necks with first generation Cambodian immigrants, but it worked.  Kudos.  What a blend.