Sapa is the inhabitation of most ethnic groups in Vietnam. Each of them has its own unique cultural identity, which always attracts a lot of tourists to visit Sapa tours. One of their unique cultural features is the custom of marriage. Now, let’s discover how interesting it is!
1/ Holding a wedding ceremony twice
This custom of marriage belongs to Ha Nhi people. Generally, this ethnic group makes up a very small percent of the total population of Sapa. According to their tradition, if a girl and a boy sing affectionately together in a festival, they will have to cover themselves with a blanket. Despite this, they still keep their distance because the custom of Ha Nhi is extremely strict with an unmarried girl. In your Sapa tours, you will find that Ha Nhi people have a customary law to hold a wedding ceremony twice. More specifically, a Ha Nhi boy is free to marry so he will take his lover home and ask for his parents’permission to get married. Then, if all members of his family agree, they will hold a ceremony in front of the ancestors’ altar. After that, they make a party and invite their relatives to enjoy it as well as give blessings to the bribe and the groom. Usually, the wedding presents of the groom’s family brought to the bride’s house are a few silver coins or a bunch of cash, a pig in about 50 kilograms, 50 liters of the white wine, a couple of uncooked chicken, sticky rice and eggs. After being married, the wife must change her family name to her husband’s. Especially, when having children or getting a well-off family, the couple must hold the second wedding ceremony.
2/ Waiting a year to get married
This is a beauty in the custom of marriage of Red Dao people. After having fallen in love with each other in the fair markets or festivals, the boy will tell his parents to go to the girl’s house to ask her age. If the age of the couple is fit, his family will give her family a silver coin. Interestingly, whether her family wants to marry him or not, they always refuse to receive the white coin for the first time. After a while, his family comes back to her house and asks for her family’s permission at the second time. If her family bring the silver coin back to his family after three days, it means that they agree to their marriage. Then his family will choose a good day to bring the wedding presents to her house. After the formal ceremony, the bride will sew two wedding dresses on her own in a year to prepare for the wedding.
3/ Not marrying the person having the same family name
According to the traditional view of H’Mong people in Sa Pa, having the same family name is considered to have the shared ancestors thus treating each other as relatives. In addition, in many places, the H’Mong groom has to perform a special custom that is doing all the works for his family on the first lunar day. In particular, if you are a tourist in Sapa tours and visit H’Mong people’s house, the wife in this family will take the initiative to cook rice and her husband will drink wine with you. The drunker you are, the happier the wife is. The reason is that this is an evidence to consider their family to be hospitable.
Well, the above are the 3 famous customs of marriage in Sapa Vietnam. If you find it interesting, let’s plan to take Sapa tours to discover it now.
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