Staying cool in the breeze on the second floor landing of the LK Pavilion waiting for our taxi driver to arrive. Unusually heavy traffic - it is New Years Day after all - made him slightly late.

Lumyai is working the camera for this shot. Which ever one of us you don't see, you can assume the missing member is taking the picture.

I could not have picked a better place if this had been where I meant to go :)

This is the view that greats you after you have given up looking for a parking spot. This is before you enter Baan Sukhawadee itself. Here they are clearly tooling around busily setting up new floral and rock garden displays. This place is magical, mystical and also oddly disturbing all at the same time.

Here was an ancient temple, its rituals still undisturbed. But then around it are buildings like that one (one of maybe twenty, at least ten) commemorating yes, but also commercializing almost to Disneylandian proportions - without the rides (so far anyway.) And surrounding all of that, but outside of the temple/theme park are a circle of strip malls for eating and buying yet more, crasher trinkets.

I didn't think the 'Three Guardian Trees' were going to make the picture cut, but we didn't take pictures while we were discovering that during high season they now charge for entry to the area. We were trying to explain that we would just like to take a few pictures. Yes, we were all dressed up and had a wedding bouquet but we didn't need to rent a wedding ensemble.

The original quote was 700 baht per person. Now, I was already of the mind that whatever today cost, fine. How often do you get married? And this was one of the most most effective affairs two broke and frugal could dream up. But I only had 3000 baht left in my wallet and I had no idea what the taxi driver cost.

We attempted to smile and look sad at the same time while talking at him in two languages and lots of gestures. Finally when I was sure paying was the only way in, suddenly the price was dropped to 400 baht total. 100 baht each and double for the me, the farang. The taxi driver had already vanished off trying to find a place to park. No best man for me :) Included was a ticket to one building of our choice and the temple.

Lumyai, one Mai's best friends is in the role of Matron of Honor. If Peter was in town I would probably have asked him if he were interested in attending, but there really isn't anyone I could think to invite. I had hoped Ooy2 would come but drama dictated that she return to her village the night before.

By the way, I adore this picture of Mai.

So, what you wonder would a Thai/American Buddhist/Erisian wedding be like? With surprisingly little effort we had concocted this approach which involved three stages. First the Erisian: we would walk slowly around the gardens taking advantage of the numerous photo ops. Assuming nothing calamitous happened to us, we would consider that Eris had given us her blessing.

Above and following are some of those photos.

Somewhere in here I discover that that bouquet is surprisingly heavy.

Don't I look thin in this picture? If I could only learn to pose like that more often. This walking around went on for some time. No one twisted an ankle, was hit by a meteorite or even stung by a bee. The first blessing was complete.

Stage two involved getting blessed by monks. While they wouldn't let us in the temple (our cheap pass didn't cover this I think is what they were saying) they did arrange for two monks to come out and bless us. This involves dipping thin sticks in water and then flicking them at us. A small amount chanting accompanies this.

While no previous monks I had met were camera shy, this order did not allow such stealing of their images. Thus there are no pictures of the blessings. I was tempted to try and get at least one, but decided to be respectful as we were asking for a blessing after all. That and you never know when the camera's damn flash will go off or not.

One blessing took place in the King Building under the huge picture of the King. The second one took place outdoors in front of a heart shaped statue.

Depending on your tastes this is not as tacky as it sounds. To me it was actually much lovelier than this picture makes it look.

The both monks were very perfunctory: arrive, organize, bless, chant, leave. Two minutes each, top to bottom.

But our union was now Buddha approved as well.

Stage Three was a nod to both the traditional Thai and American (Christian?) rituals. It would begin and end at the sea, the rest a symbolic circular pagent.

This picture was superfluous but it is one of my favorite shots so I was going to work it in somewhere.

We walk up the outer path, not unlike walking down the aisle. Just without the crowds.

On the Alter I give Mai one last chance to back out. :) Words are kept to a minimum, we know what we feel and our words tend as much to confuse each other as to clarify matters. And so until King and country, Buddha and goddess we declare by the power we have invested to ourselves our unity.

We place the rings on each others fingers. A tradition common to both cultures.

Another tradition common to both cultures: the kiss.

The bouquet and the throwing of, is not part of the Thailand ritual. Despite, or perhaps because of, there only being one other person in our party, we include this practice. Lumyai beats out her lack of competitors and catches the prize. We do not inform her until later in the day that superstition has it that because of this she will be next to be married.

We stroll back toward the center.

And continue to complete the circle back at the water.

Always in search of photo opportunities a group of Japanese tourists have been following us since the bouquet toss.

At the water we pose and show off our wedding rings to camera clicks of Japanese. Almost feels like having a crowd. Lamyai takes a few shots too.

And so ends what, until I hear tell of another, I will continue to call the finest Thai/Buddhist-American/Erisian wedding every held in Thailand.

We linger afterward and look through some of what the commercial part of the park has to offer.

Our driver found a parking spot in one of the outer layers of  hell  strip malls in front of a giant chicken mascot.

I expect that the Thai symbols for 'eat me' are embossed on it somewhere.

I am not sure I was ever told the driver's name, but if I was it did not stick. This is a shame as he did a bang up job.