Wedding invitations: a new form of social contract?

Published: 24-Jan-12

Phnom Penh (Cambodia Herald)- It is not common that a wedding party can be attended by 1000 guests in Cambodia.

Inviting guests to wedding receptions is a traditional practice. Yet not everyone known was invited in the past. Strict criteria were developed to assess who should be included and not included on the guest list since they would join the event not just as witnesses but also as representatives of luck and happiness for the new couple. With such serious criteria, wedding parties were in the past limited in size, although not in length.

Things have changed. The new criteria for invitations stretches to the workplace, from bosses to subordinates and recommended guests. Such more relaxed criteria have led to huge wedding receptions where hundreds and even thousands of guests are present, including unknown people.

This has ushered in a new form of complex social relationships and is being developed into a kind of hidden social contract that binds individuals and their relationships in Cambodian society (unlike the social contract theory of Thomas Hobbes, John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau which bound relationships between individuals and governments).

According to the so-called contract, if you're invited, it's obligatory to go. If you don’t, you will never be invited again, and must not expect any return presence for whatever you host in the future. For example, an invitation may come from a boss who seems not to know you well. But if it is based on the recommendation of the head of staff, who possesses a name list of all personnel, then you will, of course, find it hard to say no. Rejecting the invitation may cost you not your position but the relationship with your boss and your immediate head of staff. And that’s because the contract says so.

Bound by the contract is the return of such invitations to those who had invited us before. At the same time, invited guests need to return their presence with subsequent return invitations. At face-value, this looks socially nice as you are not alone. But economically speaking, we all lose.

Ordinary public servants earn an average of about $100 a month. If they are invited to two parties in a particular month, half of their income will be gone. On top of this, joining a wedding party is time consuming. As traffic in Phnom Penh gets worse, it may take hours to join a party regardless of the money spent on petrol. And if the guest is a woman, she needs more time for make-up. Last but by no means least, weddings often expose people's to health unhygienic foods and unhealthy drinks.

Inviting guests to a wedding party is inevitable and should not be discouraged. But given the various negative impacts, the issue of invitations should be reconsidered. Parties limited to relatives and friends are smaller and easier to organize. Being texted about a date and venue is not necessarily objectionable, especially between close friends.