I was told to dress semi-casually and in any color except black. So at eight a.m. on the Fourth of July, while my friends and co-workers prepared to celebrate the nation’s independence, I donned a turquoise dress and red heels and prepared to celebrate Cambodian and Puerto Rican cultures. With my faithful photographer, Colleen Lennon, I headed to the Poy family house in Easthampton, where Sakhon Poy was slated to wed her fiancé, Abdiel Matos.
High-school sweethearts Sakhon and Abdiel are both first-generation immigrants. Abdiel, an IT consultant, lived in Puerto Rico until he was fourteen. Then his family emigrated to New England.
Sakhon, who works for a group health insurance company, American Benefit Group, was born in Cambodia in 1979. Shortly thereafter, her family fled dictator Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge regime and spent the next six years in refugee and concentration camps in Thailand, the Philippines and Malaysia. In 1985, as part of the “Refrigerator Project,” Sakhon and many members of her extended family were relocated to Minnesota. Eventually her family moved to Easthampton, where she first saw Abdiel in junior high school.
“He was in band—a complete nerd,” said Sakhon when she, Abdiel and I met for coffee. “We didn’t start dating until I was a sophomore and he was a senior. I’d seen him before that, but had never spoken to him.”
Although, according to the couple, Sakhon’s traditional parents took a few years to warm up to the idea of their daughter dating a man who wasn’t Cambodian (and a Christian Puerto Rican to boot), they eventually welcomed Abdiel into their family.
The importance of family and tradition is why Sakhon and Abdiel decided to hold two wedding ceremonies—one Buddhist Cambodian, one Christian Puerto Rican.
“We did it this way to make our families happy,” said Sakhon. “I wanted to go to Vegas.”
“I wanted to go to the Caribbean,” said Abdiel. “But we’re very happy we did it this way. My family absolutely loved it.”
The Khmer traditional wedding echoes the legend of the origin of Cambodia and the marriage of the first Khmer prince, Preah Thong, to the naga (naga are supernatural beings with serpent and human characteristics) princess Neang Neak. Thong was a traveling foreigner exiled from his own land when he met the naga princess. The father of the naga princess formed Cambodia by swallowing part of the ocean as a wedding gift to the couple.
Khmer weddings are traditionally three-day affairs, featuring numerous rituals, songs, costume changes and feasts. The intricate, lengthy ceremony is directed by an emcee who dictates the pace and order of the events, which tend to be very loosely organized.
“They don’t make an itinerary,” said Sakhon. “You just go with the flow.”
“That first day was a tornado!” said Abdiel, chuckling.
Because of time constraints, however, Sakhon and her family chose to incorporate only five of the ceremonies—the Hai Goan Gomloh (The Groom’s Processional), the Gaat Sah (Cleansing Ceremony), Soat Mun (Blessings from the Monks), Ban Chhat Madaiy (Honoring of the Parents) and the Sompeas Ptem (Knot Tying Ceremony)—for the day-long Cambodian portion of the wedding, and to cut many of the ceremonies to half the usual length. The festivities began on a hazy, overcast morning as the guests, groom and groomsmen congregated at one of Sakhon’s aunts’ houses, down the street from her parents’. Dressed in shiny silver tops and too-small orange and purple bottoms, Abdiel and his groomsmen were telling jokes and looking decidedly out of place in the Cambodian costumes.
“They dressed us on the fly,” said Abdiel, grinning from ear to ear. “They didn’t measure us, and most Cambodian people are really small… But having my best man dress up in skirts was absolutely awesome.”
Laden with offerings—fruits, nuts, a pig’s head, flowers—wrapped in neon and pastel plastic wrap and ribbons, the group, led by musicians, paraded to the Poy house.
The group was greeted at the door by a female representative of the Poy family. After a brief banter between the woman and the emcee (the discussion was in Cambodian), Sakhon, barefoot and dressed in a shiny silver outfit, a crown and thick silver arm and ankle bands, exited the house to greet Abdiel. After placing multi-colored neon leis around each other’s necks, Sakhon and Abdiel went into the house, where the Poy family accepted the assortment of offerings. Guests then jockeyed for a spot on the living room floor, which was covered in a satiny orange tarp-like cloth and was empty except for a handful of musicians in the corner, including an inconspicuous woman singing a dissonant, haunting melody in Cambodian.
The next five ceremonies all involved elaborate costume changes, each one at least as intricate as the last. In the Gaat Sah, the bride and groom were properly cleansed before being wed. The groom was shaved and the couple’s hair cut, and they were perfumed. In the Soat Mun, a number of monks blessed the couple. In Bang Chhat Madaiy, the bride and groom honored their parents with music and gestures. In the Sompeas Ptem, guests tied ribbons around the bride’s and groom’s wrists and offered blessings and advice to the new couple. Some good wishes evoked laughter from Abdiel.
“It’s funny when people are supposed to give you words of wisdom when they’re not ready,” said Abdiel. “Some people said things like, ‘Don’t ever look at other women.’”
The next morning dawned sunnier than the day before, and proved to be less hectic. The Puerto Rican part of the ceremony was basically a traditional Christian wedding, according to Abdiel. The groom and his men wore traditional tuxedos, while Sakhon was resplendent in a white satiny dress with a trailing crimson ribbon. The ceremony and reception took place at the Castle of Knights in Chicopee in the early evening. Because some of Abdiel’s relatives don’t speak English, he arranged to have the ceremony performed in Spanish, then translated into English. There was one problem, though: his translator came down with strep throat. A relative filled in at the last moment, however, and pulled it off with only a few minor hiccups.
After the many ceremonies of the previous two days, the newlyweds finally got a breather as they sat at the head table for dinner and looked out at their friends and families. “I loved sitting at the table and seeing everyone there and how nice the event was,” said Sakhon. “It was nice just to sit down and absorb it.”
The one Cambodian aspect of Saturday’s events took place after dinner. Sakhon and Abdiel changed into traditional Cambodian costumes to walk around the hall, stopping at each table to greet their guests and accept gifts. Afterward they changed back. Their multicultural wedding had gone off without a hitch.
“My favorite part was to see Sakhon so very happy on her wedding day,” said Abdiel. “It was everything Sakhon wanted, and to know that it became a reality made everything great for me.”
Instead of Vegas
