Lucky Day Continues

As the Restaurant was closing on "Lucky Day" Ha informed me they had another wedding to attend tomorrow. As someone always needs to be at the restaurant, she asked me to attend in her place with Mr. Vong. I thought why not. Ha then told me I needed to come down early in the morning to wash my nice clothes that were ruined from the rain that day and for a special trip to the salon. I took this as Ha's nice way of saying I look like crap.

Lucky Day's end result was me eating a feast and not running, so I made sure to wake up extra early to get my run in. I had a quick shower, scrubbed my pants clean and then headed to the salon to get my hair washed, dried, and straightened. I returned to see Ha's jaw drop, not realizing that I actually can clean up my appearance. A quick iron of my pants and I was ready for a lunchtime wedding.

The Vietnamese work 7 days a week with a lunch time brake from 11:30-1:30 everyday. So when these lucky days.. or should I say lucky weeks happen, events are always during the lunch hour so people can come.

As we pull up to the hall where the "wedding" is there are 2 girls with white dresses and people coming from all different directions in all different attires. As we walk in I am immediately rushed to trying to figure out why I'm here. Mr. Vong assures whoever it was I was his guest. We found a table in the back with "friends" and got comfy for our 2 hour "show". As I sat there taking everything in I realized there were no seating charts. People were sitting wherever they felt like. What a great concept. I might just adopt that idea when I get married.

The procession starts and I realize those 2 girls in the white wedding dresses are actually brides maids. Just when I think it's finished, a procession of 5 cakes start and then cutting of the cakes, which we never ate. Then comes the MC, which I couldn’t understand for 2 reasons. The first obviously being I cant understand Vietnamese and the second was because I was wearing ear plugs. I was warned before to bring them if I had a pair. The volume was deafening. So I stuck them in and covered my ears with my newly straightened hair. It was perfect, because then came the karaoke.

I don’t know what constitutes a Vietnamese wedding. There were no vows, no kiss, just a procession, pictures on stage, cake cutting (but no eating), and karaoke during the entire 2 hours. Either way it was a blast.

The woman I sat next to at the wedding spoke English and got into a whole story about how she hated her husband when she first got married because she had to stay home and have babies and clean the house, but now she can work so she is much happier. We sat there chatting it up while the men drank enormous amounts of beer, always with a clink of the glasses and a "yo" the Vietnamese cheers and occasionally a "100%" where the men chugged their glasses as fast as they could.

All and all it was a very entertaining 2 hour occasion. As soon as those 2 hours were up, people cleared out as fast as they came in except this time they were drunk. Let's just hope their luck continues and everyone made it home safely.