How to plan a Vietnamese-American wedding
It seems odd that what motivated me to write about weddings was actually a funeral. More specifically, the passing of my mother, an amazingly kind and loving Vietnamese woman. Grief operates in strange ways… Maybe this is one way I fill the emptiness inside, to reach out to those who share my native culture. To say that some things should not go to the dogs, that I can contribute, that I shouldn’t stand idle while time plays out its sad tune.
Five months before my mother passed, I got married to a wonderful non-Vietnamese man. The experience of planning a mixed-race, bicultural wedding was interesting, and I think it should be documented. These days, more and more young Vietnamese people are marrying interracially. When it comes to plan the wedding, they are in a bind. Having grown up mostly in America, they have only surface-level knowledge of Vietnamese marriage customs. Parents don’t provide great explanations (ahem, generation gap!). The internet has some info (e.g. Wikipedia), but it’s general and not detailed enough to actually coordinate a wedding.
This was exactly my situation. I am a “1.5 generation” Vietnamese-American. I speak Vietnamese, eat a lot of Vietnamese food, and am familiar with Lunar New Year. But about weddings, I knew nothing. When my older sisters got married a decade ago, I was mostly a spectator. So when it came to planning my own wedding, I was stressed out. My fiancee’s family is Bolivian-American and hails from San Diego. In the land of surfers and Baja tacos, marriage customs are “American casual.” Well, if you know Vietnamese culture, you know that “casual” is not a word to describe its weddings. To bridge this gap with my fiancee, I needed to learn the Vietnamese traditions in detail. Because if you don’t know it, how can you explain it to another person. So what happens in a Vietnamese wedding? And how exactly can you put one together?
Before we get started, please note that the details here are from my own wedding. Just like every American family celebrates Christmas differently, Vietnamese families may follow wedding traditions differently. Therefore, my tips are meant as starting points. You should use them to start conversations with your parents, fiancee and future in-laws. Then together, you can (and should) customize what works for you.
A Year to 6 Months Before
During this stretch, you are choosing venue and catering. A few things to keep in mind.
First, headcount. In Vietnamese weddings, you invite the extended clan to celebrate. That means the guest list will include not just your parents’ siblings and their families, but also your parents’ cousins and their families. Friends are also included, and Vietnamese people tend to be very communal and have plenty of friends. For example, living in southern California, my Dad could have invited his friends from the South Vietnam Armed Forces, from re-education camp, and from secondary school in Vietnam. Each of these groups actually has its own “association” in southern California, which organizes get-togethers and creates many new friendships. And we haven’t even started with my Mom. All told, my wedding easily could have been 400-500 guests. Thankfully, my parents understood my desire to keep it “small” at 150 (thanks, Bố Mẹ!). So be aware of this cultural nuance when discussing venue size. Also, the topic of “your family will be huge compared to mine at wedding” —it’s real, talk about it.
Second, venue accessibility. Your Vietnamese guests will undoubtedly include elders in your extended clan, like grandparents, grandaunts and granduncles. So try not to choose places that require long uphill walks (ahem, the Malibu vineyard). That is sure to earn the “this child has lost her roots” evil eye from your parents.
Third, food preferences. Food is the essence of culture, so here is where you’ll get some tension in a bicultural wedding. My parents’ Vietnamese guests are religiously used to the 9-course Chinese wedding banquet. I personally also love those dishes. My fiancee? — an adventurous eater. At the same time, his relatives have never seen “shaking beef” or experienced the unique weirdness of “cold platter appetizer.” And his parents are vegan with strong feelings. So what were we to do? In the end, we actually did both. We catered the Chinese banquet for mosts of our guests, and Cafe Gratitude for the vegan crowd. It required a bit more logistics, but it was worth it!
Finally, during this time period, you may also need to have a Vietnamese “engagement ceremony,” known as “Đám hỏi.” This is an entirely separate event from the wedding and usually happens about 6 months before the wedding. In my case, my parents did not require it (yay!), to make things easier for my fiancee’s American family.
6 to 1 Month Before
With the building blocks in place, you move on to some framing. You need to decide on your ceremony. The big question is — one or two? If it’s one ceremony, then that ceremony will likely be mostly Vietnamese. In its strict interpretation, the Vietnamese ceremony is to be done at home, so that you can be before the ancestral altar. My fiancee also wanted to have the ceremony that his parents who raised him, had expected all their lives — a western marriage ceremony with walking down the aisle and vows, etc. So in the end, we went with two ceremonies. That turned out to be the most logistically challenging, but hey, ignorance was bliss. The frame was sealed — we’d have the Vietnamese ceremony at home in the late morning, followed by the American ceremony at our venue in the afternoon, leading into the evening banquet.
The second consideration for the ceremony is religion. My parents are Buddhist, and my in-laws are not very religious but mom-in-law does follow the Bahai faith. So we talked about where in each ceremony we could add a short Bahai prayer. Compromise done.
Month and Week of Wedding
This is the time you get down to the details of the Vietnamese wedding ceremony (aka “tea ceremony” or “ancestral ceremony.” Now, how the heck does one plan the Vietnamese ceremony with non-Vietnamese in-laws? That was a lot more work than I expected. To plan it, you need to understand some basics.
At a high level, during the wedding day, the Vietnamese ceremony takes one hour, followed by a one-hour lunch. However, in the days leading up to that, expect a lot of prep running around picking up different items and coordinating groups of people. Your wedding planner isn’t likely to know this Vietnamese stuff, so it’s on you. Knowing that my in-laws needed to prepare the unique goods needed, we rented a house in Orange County for them to come and prep. That gave them one full day to run around getting those things. But in retrospect, it should have been two. You should plan on having the groom’s side spend two full days preparing for the Vietnamese ceremony.
These preparations are so detailed that it’s best to review and discuss them in writing. Without belaboring the point, I’ll direct you to the preparation document for non-Vietnamese in-laws (below). It is in English and outlines everything from the preparation of the wedding gifts (why, what, how much), to organizing the wedding procession. It’s 8 pages long, so make yourself a snack and print it out. (You can also make a copy for your own use)
By the way, the fact that my in-laws are vegan posed a challenge for a very visual part of the Vietnamese wedding ceremony — the whole roasted pig. The roasted pig is typically part of the “offerings” in Vietnamese weddings. Thankfully, my Dad informed me that it was not a must-have. Phew!
Finally, think of all the guests at your Vietnamese wedding ceremony who will not be Vietnamese and won’t understand what is going on. I am a strong believer that culture when understood, bridges; but when not understood, divides. People enjoy traditions when they can grasp what they’re seeing. When they can’t, they get bored and check their phones. To make sure your traditions are accessible, here is a “Vietnamese wedding program in English. It tells of the story of the areca nut and betel leaf, the legend behind Vietnamese marriage customs, as well as explains the main steps during the ceremony itself. With this program, your American guests will be able to follow along. Feel free to customize it for yourself! (In Googledocs, File →Make A Copy will create a copy for your use)
Bonus — Other Cultural Touches
The ceremony isn’t the only place where you can add culture. Here are some other places where we blended the two cultures together:
- Drinks - We made a special Bolivian cocktail called chuflay
- Appetizers - Instead of regular boring apps, we catered 6 kinds of Vietnamese spring rolls from a local restaurant
- Entertainment - My husband loves EDM so we had a DJ play EDM music. But before that, there was a surprise Vietnamese lion dance!
- Father-daughter dance - Instead of a dance, my Dad and I did father-daughter karaoke! It was hilarious and truly brought out the Vietnamese love of singing. My husband and his mom did their mother-son dance in salsa!
Summary
All in all, having a bicultural Vietnamese wedding is really fun! Our wedding turned out to be a blast. I think being bicultural enabled us to really craft a wedding of our own. Not cookie-cutter, or something our guests could always predict what would happen next. Now, my wedding planning experience was less than fun but that’s the way it goes. The upside is that I learned a lot from it, and you can benefit from it too! If you’re planning a bicultural Vietnamese wedding, I hope you‘ll find my experience useful.
And now, I feel better about having done my part to document and give life to the good things that should live on.
