Sending out Wedding Invitations

I am sitting at the desk chewing the end of a pen. My girlfriend has gone to make me another black coffee. We are both trying to think of names of people to write on the invitations. We have so many friends that we cannot really invite them all. At least Tai and I have written down all the names of the important people.

It now feels like I have been living in my future mother-in-law’s house forever. Everything is now completely fine apart from some arguments and fights I had with Tai. (After the last one I ended up in the hospital and had to have stitches, but I will tell you about that another day!) Everything else is working really well. I feel like I am now living in my own home.

But, that’s not the only good thing that has happened to me since I moved here. There is one more good thing, the most important thing I have been wanting to come true for a very long. If you haven’t guessed already, my good news is that I am going to get married!

My grandmother brought up the subject again when we went to visit her the other week. At first I was thinking that she was just joking with me. But, she was serious. She told me that she had already spoken to Tai’s mum. You might remember that last time Tai’s mum was asking for more than 100,000 baht for the sin sod (dowry). As this was too much for my family to afford they then cancelled the wedding.

I couldn’t believe it when my grandmum said that Tai’s mum was happy and proud of me. She even said that I am a good father! I was so happy about it. Then I asked my grandmum about the dowry. She said that Tai’s mum had now agreed to only forty thousand baht!

A few days later, both families met at my Grandmother’s house to talk about the wedding. The truth is, I didn’t really want to go to the meeting. I was thinking that it would turn out to be like last time with all talk and no decisions. I really didn’t want to get hurt like the time before when I thought we were going to get married and then it was cancelled because of the dowry.

But, when the time came for the meeting, I left work early and drove to my grandmother’s house. When I arrived there, my parents and both of my grandmums were there already. Grace, Tai and her mum were not there yet. I felt a bit nervous about what was going to happen so I kept walking around the house until my grandma scolded me and told me to sit down.

A short while later, Tai’s mum came with Tai and Grace. Tai was holding Grace in her arms and feeding her a bottle of milk. I was really nervous and anxious, but after I heard our parents talking about the wedding seriously and working everything out and agreeing on everything, I felt so much better and stopped worrying. I really think it is important to get married. At least it’s one of the ways to show proper respect to the girl and her family. Don’t you think so?

Yesterday, my parents came to Tai’s house and gave Tai a plastic bag. We opened it up and saw the wedding cards! I felt so good that at last there would really be a wedding between Tai and myself. I felt so happy. There would be no turning back now!

I have got to go now. There are many more invitations I have to finish before the post office closes. Of course, I would love to invite you all and the many friends I have made around the world. I know that is not possible so you can follow the preparations for the wedding and the day itself on my thailandlife.com web site.

Wedding Preparations

I am sitting on my motorcycle with my fiancee outside the Wedding Dress shop in Paknam. We are waiting for my parents to come so we can go in and rent a nice suit for the big day. Tai’s wedding dress has already been sorted out as her mother made one for her. Our wedding day is coming very soon and I am really nervous about it. I still cannot believe that it’s going to happen.

Most of the things we need to do to get ready for the day have already been done. I am really happy that I finally have more free time now compared to last week. After we had handed out all of the wedding invitations, I thought that was it and I didn’t have to do anything else. But I was completely wrong. I have been really busy with the preparations. By the way, I definitely would have been much busier if it wasn’t for the people I thought I would never speak to again — my parents.

I have had a pretty bad relationship with my parents for a long time. I didn’t like it how they kept bringing up my past and how they treated me during my 18th birthday. I couldn’t really get over it and back to a normal relationship with them. Since my birthday I never had a proper conversation with them for more than ten minutes. My mum sometimes asked me what’s wrong with you? And all I did was say “nothing” and then walked away.

But since the day we went to my grandmother’s house for the talk about the wedding, they changed the way they acted towards me. They treated me more like an adult. I felt that maybe they had realised what they had done was wrong and that they were trying to make up for it. Or maybe the birth of their first grandchild had changed them.

I knew that one day I would have to start mending bridges with my parents and this seemed to be the perfect time to do that. I know that I have been very mean to them in the past. I am very sorry about that. As they were now being pretty nice to me, I decided to talk to them a bit more and start to be nice to them.

Now I really think that I did the right thing getting back with my parents because it would have been difficult to get ready for the wedding without their support. At first I thought that our grandparents would handle things while Tai and myself would carry on as normal. I thought all we would have to do is prepare ourselves so that we would look good on the wedding day. But I was wrong.

There are lots of things that need to be done before the wedding day and the more people helping, the easier it would be. There were things to do such as renting the tents and setting them up in the lane outside the house; arranging with the monks about when to come for the ceremony; contacting a caterer for the party; organising the parade to the bride’s house; setting up a web cam for people to watch around the world, etc.

I am really lucky that I got back together with my parents. I would never have been able to do it without their help. Now they are on their way here to help me choose a suit for the wedding.

A few minutes later my parents come and we all walk into the shop. I sit down with Tai and look around for a nice suit. I try lots of different ones on and at last everyone decides that I look best in a cream silk suit.

I feel so much better to have them help me. It’s good to have parents looking after you and helping you when you need them. I didn’t really think about that before. I really thought I could survive by myself without any of their help. But I was wrong.

The Day Before the Wedding

It is 6:30am and I am standing outside my fiancee’s house waiting for the nine monks to arrive. I am really excited that this is really happening. All the hard work and sweat from the last seven days to get everything ready for today is now worth it.

Yesterday was the busiest day. We both woke up very early to work on the last job, which was cleaning all three floors in the house. I really didn’t think it was necessary to clean the whole house, but we had no choice as Tai’s mum insisted. She said that there would be loads of her cousins coming and she didn’t want them to see any of the mess in the house.

It really would have taken us more than half a day to finish the work but luckily my grandmum came to help. Really she came to prepare things for the monks. On the morning of the wedding we would make merit by giving food to nine monks. So my grandmum had to set up mats and cushions, ceremonial bowls and the shrine.

After we had finished cleaning, my grandmum walked around the house checking everything. She even went into my bedroom and tried to clean things there. I told her that it wasn’t really necessary because no one is going to come into my bedroom. But she told me that the bedroom is one of the most important locations for the ceremony!

I gave her a really seriously confused face before she explained to me why. She said in the past, at the end of the day, the groom and the bride will have to go to the bedroom and lie on the bed which is full of rose petals. She said there would be someone taking pictures of us together and after that all the family members would leave the room. After the last person goes out, one of us has to get up to lock the door!

I laughed and asked her if that is really true. She said, “Yes, it is true”. She had a serious face so I stopped laughing. I had been to a few weddings with my parents when I was younger but I have never seen or heard about this part of the ceremony. I think that it would be really embarrassing for Tai and myself if we had to do it. I really hope that we don’t have to do that.

After everything was finished, my grandmum sat down with Tai’s mum and talked about the things that she would have to buy and prepare for the following day. It sounded like Tai’s mum had forgotten to buy quite a few things including the phaa wai, the clothes that the groom and the bride will give to the elders of each side when we pay them respect.

My grandmum said that Tai’s mum needed to buy silk pyjama trousers and old-style white shirts for men and sarongs for women. These would be used when we paid respect to the elders on my side of the family. Tai’s mum said she would go out to buy it later after my grandmum left. She asked us to go out with her.

After my grandmum had left to go home, the phone rang; it was Richard. We were planning on having the web cam for the wedding so that people around the world would be able to watch the ceremony. We talked for about five minutes and we decided that he would come straight away to set up the computer.

I quickly went upstairs with Tai to tell her mum about this. When we got there she said that she had to go out on urgent business. We nodded and then I told her about Richard. She said it’s good because she wasn’t ready to go and buy stuff anyway.

The day was already more than half-finished and there was still a lot to do.