15 Things about Vietnam #6(b) - Wedding Receptions

Here is a sober truth you should be careful about uttering in the presence of a Vietnamese person: Vietnamese wedding receptions can be pretty awful.

While the various ceremonies held in the early morning are intimate, elaborate and based squarely on age-old tradition (see 15 Things about Vietnam #6), at Vietnamese wedding receptions the Vietnamese love of kitsch gets seriously out of control.

One of the first things you’ll notice, when you’re standing around in the foyer of the reception venue, is that a lot of the women in attendance have made themselves up within an inch of their lives. Suddenly, you realize what a disaster it is when Vietnamese girls try to make a perfect South-East Asian complexion look even more perfect. Some of them manage to pull off the rather amazing feat of transforming beauty into ugliness. A lot of the others just start to look weird and sticky.

It takes about an hour for most of the guests to file into the reception venue, during which time the newlyweds’ happy snaps are projected onto a wall at the front of the room.

The happy snaps are usually a costume drama in their own right – some with both bride and groom in traditional áo dài, some with the bride in ceremonial red silk and the groom in a black 2-piece.

The aim with the happy snaps is to live out a full a spectrum of romantic clichés in a range of locations: in an autumnal forest of the North Vietnamese heartland, on a rough-hewn country pathway, him carrying her through swaying fields of bright green rice:

After that come the casual shots: the happy couple in matching t-shirts pouting at each other on a park bench, the happy couple skipping down aforesaid country path hand in hand, the happy couple undertaking a wholesome journey in a boat:

 - maybe a few of the bride looking admiringly over the groom’s shoulder as he pretends to strum a guitar, or receiving a kiss in some miscellaneous fantasy café:

Get yourself invited to a couple of wedding receptions and you will have seen it all. All Vietnamese wedding photos are the same. And their sameness, needless to say, is the main point: to demonstrate to the viewer that the happy couple have lived up to the aesthetic conventions of wedded bliss.

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Once the guests are seated, the reception really cranks up. A tortured looking violinist plays a Celine Dion number with an amp attached to bridge of her instrument. Then there's some faux-traditional, or even some faux-Western ballet:

The newlyweds make their entry to the accompaniment of more awful music, say a pop-rock version of “Here comes the bride” followed by an inappropriate Western sex anthem.

If at this stage you notice any terror in the eyes of the bride, any shock at the confrontation with the oncoming headlights of photographers and stage-managers, just ignore it. Remember the first principle of Asian social masochism: though a lot of social conventions are, in a primary sense, cruel, painful or just plain boring, there’s a second-order pleasure to be derived from doing what you're supposed to do that makes everything good again - almost.

Next come the speeches.

The best thing that can be said for speeches at Vietnamese wedding receptions is that they’re short. No matter how talented the speaker, the chances of him really striking a rapport with the audience are minimal; his job is to affirm the happiness of the occasion ten times over, then take his place next to the father of the bride or the father of the groom, who will then make their own short, formulaic speeches.

The speeches are introduced by an MC who is usually provided by the reception centre. After they're finished, the MC mainly gets the mike to himself.

By convention, the mike of an MC at a Vietnamese wedding reception is always turned up loud enough to give everyone in attendance an ear operation.

Though he has almost certainly never met the bride and groom before today, he will affirm their future prospects of happiness with great confidence. After this ear-splitting effusion, he announces the arrival of food and invites a close relative of the married couple to sing a tune. The singer might even be the father of the bride.

If the singer has musical talent, then his performance will be the highlight of your night. If he thinks he has talent but doesn’t, then it will be a prelude to the hell your night is about to descend into.

When the food gets going at a Vietnamese wedding reception, it really gets going. 8 – 10 courses arrive in quick succession. Everybody eats like there’s no tomorrow.  Your beer glass will be kept perpetually full. And the Vietnamese men at your table will repeatedly challenge you to down another beer; one of the things Vietnamese men are normally not too shy to ask Western visitors is how well they hold their grog – what their “limit” is.

By this stage you have entered the truly awful stretch of proceedings.

The music will probably be so loud that you can hardly talk to your neighbours at the same table, even if they speak fluent English.

In fact, the music will probably be so loud now that nobody in the room can talk to his neighbour in any language.

Now that the men at your table know your limit, they will be sitting around drinking hard (beyond their limits) and staring into space. Luckily for them, alcohol inoculates Vietnamese men against the assault of over-amplified wedding music. Unluckily for you, it also encourages them to go and have a howl themselves.

Their wives have it even worse, though. Vietnamese tradition says proper Vietnamese women never get drunk, which leaves nothing for them to do than watch their spouses getting drunk, with a mixture of boredom and amusement. If they're feeling game, they might try a hyperglycemic Vietnamese Red Bull. Liberal young ladies usually allow themselves the liberty of one or two Heinekens.

By the 80 minute mark of proceedings, half a dozen kids will be screaming at the tops of their voices and doing cartwheels up the main aisle in their party dresses.

At the 83 minute mark of proceedings, the bride and groom will join hands to pour pink champagne down a theatrically lit tower of champagne glasses, then start doing the rounds of the tables to greet the guests.

Once the newlyweds are doing their round of the room, things will gallop towards their pre-ordained end.

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The answer to the question why Vietnamese wedding receptions only last two hours is that their sheer size makes them expensive (500 guests would be normal). By general consensus, such events are fast-paced so the costs of hiring the venue, the MC and the army of waiters don’t get out of control.

Nobody wants to see families bankrupt themselves for the sake of a ritzy reception, so wedding presents take the form of money. (The idea is to place a modest sum in the red envelope your wedding invitation came in, then hand it over on your way into the main hall.)

Some Vietnamese families, though, take minimizing the costs of the wedding day a step further: they deliberately invite everyone they've ever met in the hope that the 1000 red envelopes in the tray at the end of the night will actually add up to a profit. 

Out in the foyer at the end of it all, another round of extreme photography gets underway. The bride and groom pose with every single one of the 500 (800, 1000) guests.

Your attendance here is vital, so don’t disappear into the carpark for a smoke. Vietnamese nowadays consider it highly auspicious to have a Westerner at their wedding receptions, even if they don’t know him/her from a bar of soap. The picture of you looking tall and non-Asian in the foyer is essential evidence that one has been graced with this good fortune.

While waiting for the evidence to be collected, just stand there and gaze admiringly at the bride and groom as they do their thing with the other 499 guests. Or revel in the beauty of the girls who haven’t been ruined by Revlon.

Gents, if you’re considering using the occasion to kick-start a bit of romance of your own, this is probably about as good an opportunity as you’re going to get. If you went to the formal ceremony in the morning, then chances are you now have the beginning of a crush on one of the bride's sisters and half the bridesmaids. . .

Bear in mind that there will be no after-party, no dance-floor at the reception for you to take bridesmaids for a spin around, and a strictly limited amount of time to chat. About the only chances you’re going to get are while everyone’s filing in at the start or during the messy bit in the foyer at the end.

This is the reason it’s vital for you to try to get an invitation to the intimate ceremonials in the morning. Or to a country wedding, where most of the usual time constraints don't apply.

The other main reason being to insure yourself in advance against the noise and the kitsch with some genuine Vietnamese fun earlier in the day.