Cambodian Buddhist+catholic

Hello! Most couples from differing cultures typically incorporate ideas and rituals from both backgrounds into the ceremony. For instance, have you considered incorporating traditional attire as an option? You can also look into using specific decor to show each tradition/custom. Good luck!

I saw on Four Weddings an episode where the bride was I think Korean, and the groom was Christian. They got married in a Christian church and had a Christian ceremony, but they exchanged traditional Korean vows in the Korean language. At some point during the reception they came out in traditional Korean outfits. I think it’s nice if you can try to merge the two cultures like that since that is literally what you’re doing by getting married. However, it depends on your family dynamics and how your religious leaders feel and whether or not they would support you in doing things that way. If both families want a complete ceremony from their tradition, and their opinion is important to you, then you would need to do 2. Likewise if the religious leaders won’t allow the other culture to be integrated into the ceremony, you may have to have 2.

OMG please update what you ended up doing. I am recently engaged and Khmer. My Fiancé is Irish Catholic. Both of our mothers are insisting that we marry in both of our traditional ceremonies. I am afraid that all of our non-traditional friends will pass out From exhaustion before cocktail hour.

View Quoted Comment So we weren’t able to have the Cambodian ceremony sadly! Our original reception venue burned down in June 2019 and we had to scramble to find a new venue! The one we found was closer to us in the Chicagoland area, but was also more expensive. We just wouldn’t have had the money for both considering the different outfits required and the fact that you’re feeding everyone twice. His parents actually suggested we DONT have a ceremony at the temple because we were already having a catholic ceremony. At the reception I wore the traditional gold earpieces and we did play traditional songs like the Madizone. We tried to incorporate the best we could and everyone had a wonderful time!

View Quoted Comment What we were going to do was Cambodian ceremony Friday, Catholic ceremony Saturday, and reception Saturday night. Doing both ceremonies on the same day would be crazy, especially if it’s a full catholic mass. We didn’t do a full catholic mass and it was still about 30-40 minutes. So you have to either do them on separate days, only do one, or you could do one ceremony, cocktail hour for food in whatever space allows food at one of the religious sites, other ceremony and then reception.