This is the most beautiful video of a contemporary Lao Wedding I have seen in years: the wedding of Maryka and Gregoire (by Estelle Beauvais, "Le Coeur de l'Homme"). The title of the video is "Aurore" in French which means in English "Dawn". Congrats to Estelle and the newlyweds!
You can scroll YouTube, Vimeo for hours and hours and it is indeed hard or impossible to find a beautifully made video of a Lao wedding. It requires a beautiful couple, elegant guests, beautiful phakhouan and flowers and a charming location. Most of all, it requires that traditions are respected and that the videographer is able to capture the love, the emotions throughout, the meaning of the gestures, the joy, the loss at the same time. It is even harder to organize a beautiful wedding when you are a second generation of refugees, as memories of the old people tend to dilute and you are not too sure how a wedding should be organized. Forget about getting fresh tropical flowers like the dok hak (calotropis gigantea, the flower of love, for Lao people).
Observe in particular in this video (15 minutes, it's worth it!): the preparation of the ceremony, the prayers, how the chignon was done, the preparation of the flowers for the phakhouan, the chic dinner tables, the happy guests. This wedding offers something polished that can be observed in today's French bourgeoisie and also something very particular to the ancient families of Laos; something chic but not bling bling; something affluent but not m'as-tu-vu; something old-fashioned or is it the perfume of something eternal?
Watch this beautiful short documentary, it will take a few more years for us to see another one so well done:
THE PASSCODE IS: laos2016
We wish the newlyweds many many years of happiness and may their union lasts as long as the one of their elders.