Guide to Vietnamese Weddings - Part 3

"Một, Hai, Ba, YO!", It's a Toast You'll Come to Know!

Third in a series of short articles documenting one foreigner's first-hand account of current and past Vietnamese Wedding customs and traditions. What to expect at the reception.

Guide to Vietnamese Weddings - Part 1
Guide to Vietnamese Weddings - Part 2

All Vietnamese wedding receptions are not born equal. These are no 'one size fits all' affairs. There are wide variations in venue, formality, ceremony and guest behavior.

However, some things are always the same. Some things common to most Vietnamese wedding receptions are:

Immediately you are seated, alcohol will be offered. In a hired venue, this will by the staff - often university students earning some extra cash. At a home reception, these duties will be performed by the Bride's family and friends. Either way, the service principle will be the same: Keep the booze flowing!

The Bride and Groom will visit every table and thank every guest. They will be toasted, and expected to drink more than a sip, at every single table and sometimes more than once.

There will be gown changes for the Bride. This will happen as often as her family can afford. The most gown changes I've seen is seven, total of eight gowns. The least is two, and this was largely the same gown but a clever seamstress had used the cloth wisely. With an additional piece and re-arrangement of others, the seamstress 're-invented' the gown into something almost entirely different.

Married Vietnamese women will pass a hawkish eye over the menu at a Vietnamese wedding. They are looking to see if they are getting value for the money they slipped into the envelope. Whispers of stinginess are sure to follow if the menu is perceived as anything other than most generous.

When the food arrives at any table, a hush will fall over that table. All attention to the ceremony or formalities going on at the time are forgotten and its every guest for themselves! As a foreigner, Vietnamese tablemates will place some morsels of each dish into your bowl as a sign of respect and inclusion. However, aside from these token morsels, if you aren't quick on the chopsticks you may go hungry. Whenever food is on the table, mouths will be stuffed as quickly as possible.

"Một, hai, ba YO!" will be a familiar cry to anybody who has ever been to a Vietnamese wedding. Literally meaning "One, two, three, DOWN the throat!", it is a toast. It is a cry for all at the table to drink a toast and will be shouted with a gusto that momentarily drowns out everything else. Far from being toasts to happiness, health, wealth or other good wishes, this is more a call to arms demanding the tablemates pour the contents of their glasses down their throats. The sole purpose seems to be maximum intoxication in minimum time!

The beverage for "Một, hai, ba YO!" toasts need not be alcoholic. A significant proportion of Vietnamese women, and a small proportion of men, do not drink alcohol at all. Many others will only have a glass or two or a few sips for a special occasion, such as a wedding. It's okay to join a toast with a non-alcoholic drink.

If there is a sound system, the Eagles' Hotel California WILL be played! This is the unofficial anthem of southern Vietnam - even with people who speak no English and were born decades after its release.

Guests will leave when the food is finished. They will do this enmass and faster than losing fans from a football match. Go to the toilet at the wrong time and you could return to an empty table!

There are two basic choices of venue for a Vietnamese wedding reception: hired hotel function rooms and specialist wedding reception restaurants or at the Bride's home. The venue will likely influence the formality of the ceremonial aspects as well as guest behavior.

Hotel function rooms or specialist wedding restaurants will normally be used by wealthy families, or those wanting to give that impression. These can all too often be crass, ostentatious and flashy displays of money - real or imagined.

At a function room or wedding restaurant reception, the couple will make a formal entry once the majority of guests have arrived and been seated. This will usually be accompanied by some sickeningly cheesy, saccharine-laden ode to love. Speeches will be delivered, to an uninterested audience if there is any food about, by respected elder's of the Bride & Groom's family. A cake will be ceremonially butchered by the couple and the compulsory champagne-glass pyramid waterfall trick will be performed with some pink bubbly. Guests usually get neither a slice of the cake nor a glass of the champagne. In these venues, guest behavior will be moderate and similar to a western wedding reception.

At a home reception in the countryside, the couple will be formally presented, but with a much more relaxed entry. Since many of the guests from the Groom's family may have come a day or two earlier for the final family ceremonies, it's likely there could be a party underway already. There will be speeches by the elders and the audience will pay more attention to them, no doubt due to the more intimate atmosphere. The cake will be modest and the champagne waterfall trick will not make an appearance. Important toasts will most likely be made with illicit rice-wine moonshine, while inebriation will be sought through beer.

Guest behavior at a home reception in the countryside is to be loved or loathed, depending upon one's own sensibilities. At a recent wedding in one province, the behavior was prim, proper and respectable in every way. The one before that, the two-gown wedding in a different province, was a genuine reprise of drunken sailor behavior in a seedy dock-side bar, but without the nudity or debauchery. Bodies crashing periodically to the ground, decked by an inability to contend with gravity any longer; public urination; a couple cases of projectile vomiting on innocent parties; the usual airing of family "dirty laundry"; and a full-on cat-fight! We left about 2:30pm. What a way to spend 3 hours on a Sunday!

As a foreigner at a Vietnamese wedding reception, you will be confronted by a seemingly endless stream of Vietnamese people wishing to make a toast with you. This toast will usually be a full glass of beer or a shot glass of the local rice-wine moonshine. Regardless, it will probably be offered to a chorus of "Trăm phần trăm!" (chum fun chum) or "100 Percent!". This is a call to down the lot in one go!

If it is a one-to-one beer toast, you should drink at the same time as the other person and not stop before they do. For a rice-wine moonshine toast, you will be asked to drink first. After you have drunk your shot, the other person will drink. This is a 'bonding' thing. By sharing a toast together, you establish a friendly relationship.

With so many toast invitations, you can avoid or limit inebriation and still maintain 'face' for everybody. With a beer toast, indicate how much you will drink. No language needed, just point to the level of the glass you will drink down to. For a rice-wine moonshine toast, point to half-way, raise the glass towards the other person, sip half the shot glass and hand it to them (use two hands if they are older than you). Doing these things will raise favorable comments and you can safely regulate your own alcohol intake.

A Cross-Cultural Comedy: My Unconventional Vietnamese Wedding