Music & Rituals: Vietnamese Weddings (updated!)

As someone who was born into a Vietnamese family, I've been involved in a number of Vietnamese traditions and practices as a child. Naturally, then, I'm familiar with a bit of the Vietnamese culture - even despite my own family not being that heavily ingrained into it (since, according to my mom, many Vietnamese families become significantly less in touch with the culture after immigrating to America). 

Out of the ceremonies carried out in the Vietnamese culture, the wedding tradition is one of the most familiar ones to me. The particular one I attended stuck out quite a bit to me, after all. It was specifically with my mom and her boyfriend, back when I was a young teenager. Since the wedding was arranged to be at Vietnam - considering that we were staying at/visiting Vietnam at the moment - it was the first time I was able to personally witness what a traditional Vietnamese wedding was like.

Now according to my mom and other sources, weddings like this are often based on what religion the involved parties believe in. It's often either Buddhist or Christian. In my mom's case, she's Buddhist - so the wedding wasn't held at a church, but rather at our relatives' house (since we were temporarily staying there at the time) - and prayers were done in relation to Buddhist principles as well. The wedding involved the traditional engagement ceremony, too - which had the groom's family members bring gifts and jewelry to the bride's family members for the bride. Here are a few pictures from my mom's engagement ceremony:

The big after-party in the afternoon, however, would apparently be around the same regardless of religion. 

Either way, Vietnamese weddings tend to include either traditional Vietnamese music or modern, popular songs from Vietnam or America. Or even all of those. It is rather common for weddings to even hire a band to play live as well (sources: 1 & 2). The traditional Vietnamese music part, however, is naturally most in touch with what makes Vietnamese culture unique. It's slow and conjunct, often complete with vibrating vocals of a sweet and smooth kind. It's often much like the song below:

This video even includes a slideshow of pictures from a Vietnamese wedding. It is not the original video for the song, however. The original song video can be found in The Nguyen Collection's YouTube channel.  

I unfortunately cannot provide much of an example for modern Vietnamese songs that'd be played, since I have zero idea as to what most young people in Vietnam would listen to today. I'm not entirely sure just how popular and common Vpop is among the people in Vietnam, either (even though it's actually quite good). What I am familiar with, however, is the general style of music the older Vietnamese people around me enjoy. The music is overall similar yet slightly different to traditional Vietnamese music - which may be why the older people enjoy it so much. Here's an example of it, which definitely captures many of the elements I often hear in my family and their Vietnamese coworkers' favorite songs:

I could go on and on about what this song shares with many of the songs my family and their Vietnamese coworkers like to listen (and sing) to. Long story short, however, the same kind of introductory music, instruments, singing style, and transition from slow music to higher, more powerful music/vocals are used in this song.  

So how is this significant? Particularly, Vietnamese weddings are still ultimately arranged by the couple themselves (even though their families still play a very large role in the process and actual wedding procedures (source). Therefore, the music is part of what they ultimately decide on. So this kind of music is a natural go-to song for people like my family. They even enjoy gathering together with other relatives and/or coworkers in the same house during special occasions - loudly karaoke-ing the night away with songs like the above example.