We knowingly, and with full faculties intact, quick-marched into the gaping maw of self-destruction. Ashes and embers await but at least we’re hand-in-hand together and are resolved to see this kerfuffle to the end. No, I’m not regaling the tale of the Tết Offensive. But rather we had decided to get married and have a wedding in the flickering cauldron that is inordinately expensive Los Angeles and all its inherent inflated prices.
This surely ill-fated decision is made all the more incongruent as I’m the child of Vietnamese refugees who arrived in the mid-80s as boat people and had to start from scratch wrestling with every unctuous rung on the rickety ladder to the American middle-class. My childhood was wrought with pinched pennies and unsinkable immigrant work ethic ingrained into every waking activity. Every dollar was hard-earned and ravenously stowed away as the hard lessons of the postwar diaspora were learned and learned permanently by parent and child alike.
And along came the stars and moon and the way they sometimes align inexplicably. I met the woman of my dreams and questions were popped and proposals accepted. But that’s all storybook boilerplate and the easy part. The real immigrant upbringing hardship begins with the nuptial planning process. Navigating the financial and divergent cultural demands that tying the knot entails. We considered the options: Destination Tijuana wedding wherein we stretch our dollars to their very tensile limit? Perhaps a cut and dry City Hall ceremony in judge’s chambers followed by a light smattering of friends and family for brunch? Or last-minute Vegas chapel wedding to wring the most buffet bang for our scant bucks?
It should be noted that we’re both dyed in the wool Angelenos and perfectly aware of the inflated economy that comes with living in a desirable coastal high-cost major metropolitan zip code. We are familiar with colleagues grappling to get their hands around their crippling avocado toast budgets. But we pulled the trigger nonetheless. And my no-nonsense marrow-deep frugality was about to be put to the test.
The initial sticker shell shock of wedding accoutrements had our eyes doing somersaults in their sockets. What with premiums already sinisterly LA-inflated, add to that contretemps the word “wedding” affixed to anything and the price erupts a further few percentage points arbitrarily. Umbrella? Five bucks. Oh, wedding umbrella? Fifty bucks now. We were reeling over the flabbergasting costs spiraling ever out of control the more we waded into this financial farce. Who would have thought a salad fork could be this vulgarly exorbitant?
Empty phrases like, “it costs what it costs” and “if you can’t splurge now, then when can you?” were beginning to fall on deaf ears. And I was beginning to get a little green around the gills when the realization set in that twenty-thousand dollars might be considered a microbudget wedding here in the sunny southland. But we were intent on marching down that aisle. My feet were blistering hot for the altar still, but my wallet was beginning to wheeze from the implications of hosting one here. The US wedding industry was clocked at a relentless seventy billion dollars in 2023 with no signs of slowing in sight. The pandemic only encouraged this surge with many couples postponing their wedding plans culminating today in this mad Oklahoma Land Rush scramble for available DJs, photographers, and ornate chafing dishes.
The slings and arrows and PTSD of just regular ol’ garden variety wedding planning were only furthered compounded by the constructs of Vietnamese traditions that were being imposed upon me since adolescence. We were charged with striking some kind of acceptable balance between western and eastern traditions. A tightrope walk between bouquet-throwing and traditional tea ceremonies respectively. Along with adhering to the paramount tradition that dictates weddings are grand family affairs where extravagance and opulence have two seats front and center near the bride and groom. Which runs quite contrary to the struggling immigrant experience of my youth making little balls out of soap slivers to save money and fastidiously eating every last grain of race in the bowl lest you incur another parental retelling of fleeing from communists and famine and scarcity and horror in bygone homelands.
But when all was said and done; when the napkins were crumpled and the vows glowingly uttered and the wine goblets clinking around our dress shoes after the hurricane of joviality and matrimonial good cheer; there was a tinge of relief. Ultimately, we weren’t gratuitous with our spending nor were we opting for Costco Oreos as appetizers. It was a nice middle ground of evaluating what was important to us and how much aggravation we were willing to invite into our lives throughout the span of the engagement. And everything else was communal and accomplished with the support of our family and friends all-hands-on-deck style on the day of. Confoundingly and implausibly against all odds, it still managed to come together all fanciful and picturesque somehow.
Sure, not everything was perfect. A distant relative called me by the wrong name during a rambling toast and the Fire Marshall was leery of the incense burning at the ancestral altar as per Vietnamese wedding tradition. But my newly minted wife and her somehow still ecstatic now-husband endured it all. So maybe that’s what you’re really getting with that astronomical wedding price tag there: The realization that nothing’s ever perfect but there’s consolation in the fact that you’re perfect for each other. Which just might be a bargain. Put aptly, “Yêu nhau mấy núi cũng trèo, mấy sông cũng lội, mấy đèo cũng qua,” which translates to love can conquer every mountain and wade every river and pass any valley ahead. Essentially love is like a guerilla jungle army capable of toppling the toughest and almightiest odds against them. And that’s just the historical imperative.
Tommy Vinh Bui is a librarian and doctoral student. He was a Peace Corps volunteer serving in Central Asia and a 2018-19 Arts for LA Cultural Policy Fellow for the City of Inglewood. His work has been featured in the Wende Museum exhibition Vietnam in Transition, 1976-present about the multi-layered intersection of arts, history, and memory since the end of the Vietnam War.
