The Best Thai Wedding – Day 1

When I think of exotic wedding locations, a secluded beach in Mexico, or maybe somewhere more romantic like the Maldives, but how about the northern mountains of Thailand? It turns out neither Ann nor I am that much into beach life.

When I met Ann, she’d been living in Bangkok for some years, but her hometown was Chiang Mai in the north of Thailand, so it made sense to look for something from her native culture.

After searching the web for wedding packages, she stumbled upon an events group that happened to be organizing a traditional Thai Lanna style wedding in Chiang Mai; mission complete.

To be clear, there were certainly elements of a traditional Lanna wedding in the package Ann found; dress, food, blessing, and entertainment, but we did notice there were some irregularities given that this wasn’t the first time either of us had been married and also there were some traditions from other regions mixed in. Despite this, it was still a lot of fun, we’d even consider doing it all again sometime in the future.

If you’ve never heard of Lanna before, Lan Na “Kingdom of a Million Rice Fields” was the name of the northern region of Thailand between the 13^th and18^th centuries.

We were both excited to experience this unique opportunity and to learn a little more about the old Thai culture from Ann’s home province.

Quick Fact; Since moving to the USA Ann has maintained LANNA as the vanity license plate on her cars.

It’s good to be lucky

If you didn’t know, the number nine (9) is considered lucky in Thailand. For our wedding, the organizers were trying for a 99 couple event, however, through some unfortunate circumstances we ended up as 7 couples, we weren’t too put-out since it was still going to be a traditional Thai Lanna wedding. In any event, they did manage to schedule the final event on the 2nd day for 9:00 am on Sept 9^th, 2009 (9/9/99).

The event was sponsored in part by local businesses to help promote tourism in the region. Because of this, it was going to be a two-day event; The main ceremonies on the first day with the Thai Lanna theme, and then a more international theme on the second day where the event sponsors would be promoted and local media present.

It was pretty much a ‘turn up the day before’ arrangement, with dresses, rings, hair and makeup, location, food, entertainment, and accommodation all included. This was perfect since we both had busy jobs with limited time to put anything like this together ourselves.

Sounds too good to be true, huh?

Disaster Strikes

After emailing my clothing measurements a month prior, what could go wrong with a ‘one and only’ fitting the day before the wedding?

Unless you’re unusually petite then you should know before heading to South East Asia on vacation that you’ll be somewhat challenged to find clothes for a more portly western figure ?

Yup, you got it, my jacket and pants looked like they’d shrunk in the wash, thank goodness Ann’s dress fitted perfectly but she does happen to be a perfectly petite Asian size…!

A Lesson in Thai etiquette

You can imagine, I was a little stressed, to say the least. And although Ann did her best to keep me calm, I finally lost it with one of the organizers as we left the bridal shop. I felt completely helpless not understanding the conversations, and my frustration finally got the better of me.

I’ll give credit to the organizers; they did everything they could to sort things out, but unfortunately, there was only so much additional material in my outfit for adjustments. I finally gave in to the fact that it was too late to be concerned.

Some small overnight adjustments enabled me to squeeze into the pants and jacket which fitted my not so sleek physique – thank goodness I was only going to wear this outfit on the 2^nd day for a few hours.

Little did I know, the reason for driving to the cultural center was to get fitted for a traditional costume from their large wardrobe for the first day. Luckily I was more successful in this endeavor and my temper very quickly settled – wow, what a start?

Day 1 Agenda

• Assemble at Wat Phra Singh for instruction
• Blessing of the wedding couples
• Brunch
• Monfai Cultural Center for make-up, hair, and dress
• Wedding Ceremony
• Wedding Breakfast with local northern Thai fair
• Traditional northern Thai entertainment

Assemble at Wat Phra Singh for instruction

There are many beautiful temples in Chiang Mai, Wat Phra Singh being one of them.

On all of our trips to Thailand, Chiang Mai is always on our itinerary, we always go back to Wat Phra Singh to enjoy some fond memories of this day.

Blessing of the wedding couples

It was still quite early in the day for the swell of tourists in Chiang Mai, so we pretty much had the temple to ourselves along with friends and relatives.

Making merit is a regular occurrence for temple goers in Thailand, this is the action of giving to the temple for it’s upkeep or to support the monks and can be in the form of money or more often pre-packaged baskets of non-perishable food.

We were all provided baskets to present to the monks before the marriage blessing started.

I’ll never complain about church pews again

You’ll see people in Asia sitting on the floor a lot more than we do in western society, this is very much about the culture. Starting at a young age, you’ll see children squatting on their heels or cross-legged as they play in groups. It’s possible there is some connection to age, seniority, and respect.

Memories of uncomfortable morning school assemblies came back to me during the blessing ceremony in the temple; my limbs have not got any more flexible with age, so this was definitely not my favourite activity, only to be repeated a second time on the morning of the second day.

Brunch at Huen Phen featuring traditional northern cuisine.

We’ve eaten at Huen Phen in Chiang Mai quite a few times. Luckily it had been pre-booked because it gets busy. Despite its popularity, there aren’t that many venues in Chiang Mai that specialize in traditional food. I’m not sure if this is a sign of the times pandering to the tourist trade, or because of the cost to produce these authentic dishes, but this is a restaurant we always try to visit.

Monfai Cultural Center for make-up, hair and dress

The organizers did a great job bringing in resources; both guys and gals got make-up and hair setting, you can imagine with 14 people this took a few hours – time for a nap ?. Some outbuildings provided a convenient place for preparations, this was not a unique event for the Monfai Cultural Center, they continue to host Thai Lan Na weddings.

Pre-ceremony Food and drinks to keep our strength

Once we were all ready, we changed into our Thai gowns and moved upstairs. Around an outside balcony, a facsimile of a market was set up which acted like a buffet full of delicious goodies and drinks. Unfortunately just as we started eating, the heavens opened with people scrambling to move cushions and carpets from the central open-air seating section. No worries, the change in weather helped cool us down and the rain passed after about an hour.

Wedding Ceremony

The ceremony was quite interesting, firstly musicians lead us into the central area of the house. There was some effort to enjoy a tradition that’s more common in the central region of Thailand where the groom is challenged more than once (like passing through locked doors) before seeing his bride, The idea being that he has to pay each challenger or relative. I’m not entirely sure if this is a demonstration of the groom’s wealth or even signifies the dowery that would normally be paid to the bride’s family, or if this is a rouse for relatives to trick the newcomer to the family.

we all sat in a line across the front of a stage on Thai cushions. The traditional house was built on stilts, providing a covered area on the ground floor for storage and livestock. On the floor above rooms are organized around the central floor or in a ‘U’ shape with an open area in the centre with no roof acting as an open living room. The Monfai Cultural Center is a very large construction such that there’s enough room for a stage in the open area also.

In the temple earlier each couple had been joined by a string during the blessing. In a similar manner, a long string was woven across the front of the stage to connect us all for this final ceremony.

This part of the Lan Na wedding would have been conducted by a village elder who gave instruction on married life (unfortunately this was all in Thai and I’m still not sure I believe the version Ann quoted me later that evening)

The ceremony and instruction included some spoken and some chanted form. This concluded the actual ceremony.

Once all this was finished then family and friends filed past the stage to tie string on couples’ wrists, this was very similar to the monks if you go to temple for blessing.

Dinner with local northern Thai fair

Now it was time to eat more of the market fair and enjoy some entertainment. I had eaten bugs previously, but it was a surprise to find them served up at my wedding breakfast. Ann managed to trick me to eat a few – they aren’t recognizable once you start chewing and most are fried so not much different to eating a normal savory snack. If you’ve been to Asia you’ll most likely have seen insects on sale as snacks in the markets, while this is in some part pandering to the tourist industry, if you go to local markets you will find large piles of fried insects on sale. We typically buy a few bags for snacks while on our Thai road-trips.

Traditional northern Thai entertainment

Various dance performances accompanied by traditional musical instruments were included for entertainment along with some singing. Check out the video below which shows some stock footage from the Monfai Cultural Center website.

Relax for the evening at Heun Dok Kaew Resort, Chiang Mai

There was no time for any honeymoon yet 🙂 Day #1 was very tiring for all, but I still managed to muster enough energy to carry my new (and thankfully petit) bride across the threshold of our room at the Heun Dok Kaew Resort. It was a nice secluded and quiet resort close to the Royal Park Rajapruek which would be the final location for day #2. We’d visited the resort the day before and managed to extend our stay by one day to relax a little.