Local Wedding

My wife, Martha, and I were invited to the wedding of Greg Page and Ratriey Dang.  Greg and Ratriey were married in a civil ceremony about ten days ago.♠

Friday was the day for the traditional Cambodian wedding and the Invitation say 8:00 AM.  However, Greg had warned me that it would go all day and that we should stop by and visit the bridge and groom and then go about our business.  Martha and I showed about 0830 and stayed until about 1000 and then went to conduct other business.  While there we saw Greg and Ratriey and the wedding party in traditional Cambodian dress.  While the men looked handsome, the women, and in particular, the bride, looked spectacular.

Inside the house, in Dracut, a band of about five men were playing traditional Cambodian music and outside there was a awning covering several tables and we met several of the people there, including Greg's parents, Jonathan and Patrice Page.  Mr Page was one of those fortunate enough to escape from the World Trade Center both in 1993 and on 9/11.

Mimi Parseghian, with whom we sat at the Reception the next day, said that she went later and it was very crowed.  Personally, I liked the "Dawn Patrol" as it was easy to talk with the people who were there.

So, Saturday was the Reception, beginning at 5:30 PM.♥  We showed about 6:00 PM.  It was a broad collection of people, including Greg's classmates from Stanford, Naval officers he had served with in the Navy and National Guard colleagues from his new status as a Massachusetts National Guard Captain.  There were also bloggers, including the aforementioned Mimi Parseghian and Craig Himmelberger and your humble blogger and his wife.  And, from Friday morning, I met one of the Groomsmen, who has his own web site, sort of a news aggregator, Change dot Org.

There was Greg's Father and Mother and Brother and Sister.  There was the Bridge's parents, Mr Chamroeun Khom and Mrs Phin Dang, and Brothers and Sisters.  And, there were many from the Cambodian community.  A sizable crowd.

At the table we sat at there was also Mimi Parseghian, to our left.  To our right were Sam Meas and his wife, Leah, both born in Cambodia and now here in the US.♣  Across from us were two couples where the husbands had gone to college with Greg Page, at Stanford.  On the right side a couple who live in New York, where he is in Investing and she is a a lawyer.  In a previous post I mentioned that she is a graduate of the same law school as my youngest son.  Both had been young members of the Clinton Administration as it was winding down.  That is the time when others, looking to the future, jump ship with six month or so to go and thus great opportunities are open to young men and women just getting their feet wet in Washington.

Toward our left was a couple with a local connection.  The wife was from Salem, NH.  After we talked for a while, I became convinced that her Father served in a KATUSA unit, which is a US Army unit in Korea where South Korean and US soldiers serve in the same unit.  After his service in Korea he joined the US Army and fought in Viet-nam.  The husband works for a No-Profit Organization in DC, dealing with the problems of "human trafficking", to include trafficking in women.  The husband, Brad Myles, the Executive Director of the organization, said that in fact, human trafficking in women had migrated from Thailand to Cambodia, since the Thai Government has cracked down on sex tourism.  The couple lives in Adams Morgan, in Washington.

The food started about 8:30 PM, with a lobster and crab soup, followed by breaded crab balls, which were great.  These were followed by several other course, of which I lost track.  It was different and it was good.

For me, aside from the conversation around the table, the highlight was Greg and Ratriey going from table to table to receive their wedding gifts.  Unlike a tradition American wedding, there were not gifts based upon where the couple was registered.  Rather, we gave money.  The idea was to cover the cost of the reception (good move for Mr Chamroun Khom and Mrs Phin Dang, the parents of the bride).  There were envelopes at each table and a sort of Table Captain, who passed out the envelopes and then collected them and handed them to the Couple.  Straight forward so far.  But, this is a Wedding Reception, so there are variations, including the Table Captain standing on a chair and holding up the envelopes toward the ceiling, with Greg lifting up Ratriey, so she could grad the envelopes.  A lot of work for the Groom.  Not quite a Shivaree, but the same outcome, perhaps.

Towards 11:00 PM Sam Meas and his wife left and then Mimi wanted to go and we escorted her to her car and then headed home.

Reflecting on the Reception the thing that struck me was that there was a large number of people of various backgrounds, enjoying themselves together and enjoying it.  It was the best face of Lowell and the best face of these United States.

And a hearty congratulations to Greg and Ratriey.

Regards  —  Cliff

♠  This reminded me of the drill in West Germany, at least in the 1960s, where everyone had a civil wedding and then those who wanted got married in a church also.  Put another way, a church wedding did not substitute for going down to City Hall and having the civil ceremony.  From a First Amendment point of view this makes some sense.  The State is interested in the legal arrangements, which the State may sever later on, distributing the assets of the contracted arrangement.  The church wedding is about the couple making a commitment before God.  In fact, in the Catholic tradition it is the couple who perform the ceremony and the Priest is a witness for the Church.  The Priest does not "perform" the sacrament, the couple does.
♥  I like the British approach of saying something like 5:30 for 7, meaning we will be ready for you at 5:30 and have cocktails, but we are eating at 7 for sure.  It takes some of the guesswork out of things.  On the other hand, it does not provide for a more casual approach to living.
♣  Candidate for the Republican nomination to run for the Fifth Congressional District seat, against our former neighbor from across the street, Rep Niki Tsongas.