Tuesday, March 9, 2010

Vietnamese and Western Wedding

Most Vietnamese wedding takes place in the autumn and winter, when the weather is cooler and famers have less fieldwork. Europeans, meanwhile, tend to marry in the summer. What most Westerners fail to realize is that ancient superstitions influence their wedding dates. Accoding to an old rhyme, couples marrying in June (the most popular month for Western weddings) may look forward to”one long honeymoon”. This belief goes back 2000 years, since the sixth month was named after Juno, the Roman goddess of marriage. May, meanwhile, was deemed disastrous for marriage, as the Romans presented offerings to the dead at this time.

Many Vietnamese families turn to astrologers to help determine the bride and groom’s compatibility and to choose an auspicious wedding day. For a Vietnamese woman, getting married at the age of 22, 23, 26, or 28 is considered unlucky.
In both Vietnam and the West, getting married traditionally involved two steps: the engagement and the wedding.