The wedding was held at our home town in Chaiyaphum, a small province in Northeast Thailand (Isaan) where both my sister and I were born and raised and where our parents and relatives liveWe decided to do it the old way in which we prepared as much as we could ourselves instead of paying a wedding organiser or catering business. I think this way is more significant and memorable.
A day before the wedding my relatives and neighbours prepared some essential ingredients to make foods on the day such as curry paste, chilli powder, grounded roasted rice.
My mum and other older ladies made sticky rice and banana wrapped in banana leaves (Khow tom mud) as a dessert.
In the evening my big sister, my cousin and I went to the market to get the fresh ingredients for the wedding day. An example of the shopping list was 100 kg of pork!
Before 7am monks walked past our home, and the bride and groom were waiting to offer the food and get a blessing from the monks for their wedding day.
There is no such thing as gifts in our traditional weddings, but the guests will put some money in the envelope that is sent out with the invitation card to give to my parents as a helpful donation for the event. There were however thank you gifts to give back to the guests which were carved soaps made by my sister’s friends.
The amount of money depends on how much the two families agree prior the wedding.
The meaning of the chanting mostly teaches the couple about married life and blesses them.
The ceremony finished before lunch time and after that it was clean up time.
Well, it couldn’t be a food blog post if I am not talking about food! The first dish I want to mention is mince pork salad, also known as “Larb moo”. In my opinion larb that is served on a wedding day always tastes the best! I think the reason probably is that the ingredients, such as roasted chilli powder and grounded roasted rice, are freshly prepared, and because they are served alongside varieties of fresh vegetables. The other dish is “Tom yum soup”, the big pot of tom yum soup I continually helped to cook.
There were some dishes that I cooked for my family. The first one was grilled whole fish with salad and peanut dipping sauce. The ingredients for the dish were from my dad’s farm including the fish which was in his pond. The next one was vermicelli noodle salad with seafood, another big portion of food I made as well.
The next dish we had was a little bit unusual. The dish was “Moo ka ta”, which is grilled pork on the pan using charcoal. The dish is comparable to Korean BBQ in Australia. Most of the day it was so hot in Thailand, but luckily it was raining one day and the temperature was cooler and that was the day we had it.
Charinya's Kitchen 
Congratulations to your sister!
Thank you 😊
That looks like so much fun. A local family invited me to Isaan for Songkran last year and it was a blast. Isaan food is so good.