Marriage is a cause for great celebration in Thailand, usually involving a series of ceremonies based on Thai culture and Buddhist observances that vary a little from province to province in Isaan.
Wedding invitees may be limited to family or may extend to whole villages, family and many friends from afar – a wedding held near Krasang last year cost around 1 million baht and culminated in a catered evening dinner and stage show with dancing girls and several singers.
Recently my Thai wife received a phone call on a Saturday from her sister-in-law who lives in her family’s village near Krasang (Buriram province). The message was “Can you come to an engagement party at 7.00am tomorrow morning?”
Her son-in-law’s sister was getting engaged to a farang and nobody in the family spoke English (not entirely true as I found out when I arrived). It would be good to have another farang there to make him feel less isolated – thoughtful people the Thais!
We arrived at around 7.30am though in true Thai style others arrived well after us. The American man was with his lovely Thai fiancée inside the house surrounded by her family.
This ceremony involves the man passing over a small portion of the sin sod he pays to the mother for his bride-to-be (in this case 200,000 baht of the 1 million total sin sod).
Sin sod is a payment to the family to offset the loss of their daughter – it can be made up of cash, gold jewellery, pigs, chickens, whisky or anything else of value to the family.
Buriram and Surin provinces commonly use pigs but provinces north of Buriram use ox or buffalo instead. If the lady has no parents then payment is made to an elder sister. The groom will pay the remainder as part of the wedding ceremony.
The Young Couple To Be
The farang is an American who works in Qatar. He joined the US Army at age 19 from his home State of Alabama but now works as a contractor to the army.
It was his first visit to Thailand but as he was a country boy he felt quite at home with the people in the Thai farming community – not much different from where he grew up he said. His fiancée works in Dubai and speaks very good English.
The young couple was dressed in beautiful traditional Thai clothing. Plenty of family, friends and village neighbours were on hand to help with the celebrations.
As is usual with Thai “parties”, the men were in one place while the women were in the house or out the back preparing and serving food. The men enjoyed a glass of Leo beer or a dash of whisky in honour of the happy event. Within minutes of arriving, the lady’s uncle had asked me to have a drink with him.
I had a couple of glasses of Leo with the lads out the front of the house while the lucky couple had photos taken and chatted with family and friends.
Her uncle spoke quite good English but is keen to learn more – we agreed to meet up at another time so he could learn a little more of our wonderful language.
Article By Lindsay