The fifth anniversary of my first wedding.

It's tomorrow. July 1st.

Way back then, I didn't have a blog and never really shared the photos, so no better time than right now to walk down memory lane.

Yes, we had two weddings. The first was a traditional Lao ceremony, which is essentially a community blessing of the couple. Our second wedding was our legally-binding wedding on the beach with the white dress and all that.

I'm going to do my best to explain what little I understood of that day, but I could get pieces of this wrong. Joy, please correct my goofs :-)

There are tons of differences between the two ceremonies, but nothing is more significant than the level of involvement of the bride and groom. In April, we picked everything from the location to the font selection.

In July, though, we chose NOTHING. NOT-A-THING. Not the date, the location, the color of my blush, nothing. It was kinda nice, actually. We just shut up and did as we were told.

The ceremony takes place at the bride's house, but it is very much a community event. When the set-up crew arrived at our house, they split up with some setting up the ceremony and others getting the bride and groom ready. That was no easy task.

They pulled my hair back.

Tied it up. Tight. Really tight.

And made it stay that way.

And then came the gold. They wrapped my hair in gold, and then they layered gold necklaces on me and bracelets on both wrists. The earrings were so heavy they were screwed on. More gold than I'll every see again in my life. It was basically community gold that gets shared - and I got to wear it. How cool is that?

After I was sufficiently adorned, I was led out to my living room where I would wait for my groom. That's right, he comes to me. He leads a procession of men, and he's supposed to be carrying the candle (oops) with a close friend carrying the umbrella (both of which signify something, but I have no idea what).

There is an exchange that I don't understand between the men and the women at the door, which is part of the tradition. In our case, the women laughed at the groom and the men for getting the candle wrong. After the exchange, the groom is allowed into the house, and he is led to his bride.

The ceremony begins. The two elaborate flower arrangements are in the middle with candles on top and strings that we hold. Everything on and around them are symbolic blessings of various things.

I'm not gonna lie. The ceremony is long. It was at least an hour, maybe more. I wish I'd understood more of it, but even if I did, I was probably too nervous to pay a lot of attention anyway. I was too busy trying not to do something stupid, or fall over from my awkward sitting position. That's Xang behind Khan, one of his best friends. Behind me is his sister. At one point she held my arm up at the elbow for me. Bless her.

There is a portion that involves an egg. It is a blessing of sorts, I think for fertility.

We were supposed to eat the egg, but they forgot, and I can't tell you how relieved I was. My mother-in-law later laughed about it, so I guess it wasn't a big deal for them, and a definite  stroke of good luck for me.

Next up is my favorite part of the ceremony. Each guest gets a couple of the strings, and they tie one on each of our wrists and give our union their blessing. Then we wear the strings on our wrists for at least three days, or longer if we wanted to.

Oh, and you know that part about vowing to love each other, respect each other, be true to each other for the rest of our lives, et cetera?  The Lao ceremony had that, too, except rather than make these promises to each other, we made them to our family elders.

The bride and groom then pass out a small gift of money and a flower wrapped inside banana leaves, again to our family elders.

Following the ceremony, we had food and cake.

And drinks. Traditionally, the bride and groom offer, well, it's a shot, I guess, to our guests.

And did you notice the TV left in our living room? No, we didn't leave it there to show off our wealth and our 1993 technology. Think about it, sports fans. Five years ago was 2006. July 2006. That's right, the World Cup.  Who needs dancing?

After all the craziness settled, Khan and I had 5 seconds to ourselves and we exchanged rings. It's not a part of the ceremony, but we wanted a way to tie both weddings together.

Y'know, I just realized another thing both ceremonies had in common. I was barefoot for both. And for both, I searched for weeks for the perfect shoes. Go figure.

Well, happy anniversary, baby, and thank you to your family for letting me in.