It’s about 7am and as I sit here on my balcony overlooking the Tonle Sap river in Phnom Penh checking my fantastic Fantasy Football score I’m distracted by some awful music coming from around the corner.
I don’t have to move from my seat to find out what’s going on as the music is getting closer. Within minutes a procession of Khmers* dressed in traditional outfits appear, walking in twos and carrying what looks likes lots of biscuits and fruit in shiny gold trays. At first I thought it was a funeral but as the procession passed under my balcony it was clearly a happy occasion.
With this I started googling and sure enough a Khmer wedding is a very traditional if not tiring affair. The wedding takes three days and three nights and involves the bride changing her dress no less than 10 times! The procession I witnessed was the Groom’s procession. It involves banging pots and chanting (hence the awful music) as the procession weaves it’s way in and out of the streets serenading the backstreet population. When they arrive at the brides house, they are greeted by the cupping of hands and the couple are then joined by a garland. They then pay respect to the brides parents and pray at an altar.
Following this the grooms procession enter with the gifts. The gifts were all the shiny gold trays that I saw them carrying. Apparently the more gifts that are brought, the wealthier the grooms family are. In this case there were well over 200 so he must have been a rich dude by Khmer standards!
*Khmers: 99% of Cambodia belongs to the ethnic group called the Khmers so the people, the language and the food are referred to as Khmers, Khmer and Khmer cuisine respectively.
R.
