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Red and gold are good luck colors and are used traditionally in wedding dresses. Over the arch it translates roughly to Happily Ever After or Love Forever. And the Vietnamese wedding works slightly differently. They don't have a priest, rabbi, minister, or even a monk presiding over the wedding. Thing happen this way...
1. Get a bunch of gifts (traditionally these are these small green fruits, rice, tea, flowers, cake, Vietnamese sausage, more fruit, and money/jewelry) together and put them in red containers covered with a red cloth that has the double happiness symbol.
2. Have a bunch of your close friends and family members (men) carry said gifts to the parents house of the bride. (In my case the parents were divorced so I started off at Dad's and went to Mom's from there.
3. The men who carry the gifts hand them to the close friends of the bride who in turn bring them into the house and place them in front of the family altar.
4. Pray with the bride to the bride's ancestors and bow 3 times (or 4 [once in each direction] depending on the circumstancees)
5. Put the jewelry on the bride starting off with earings, then necklace, then bracelet, and then the ring. (brides in Vietnam wear the ring on the right)
6. Pour tea for the parents and ask for their permission to marry their daughter.
7. They approve and you are no officially married.
8. Kiss the bride.
9. Go to the reception.
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"I'm completely in favor of the separation of Church and State. My idea is that these two institutions screw us up enough on their own, so both of them together is certain death."
- George Carlin
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