When Cools Nick Dirk flew from Antwerp to marry Le Thi Kim Sieu in her village in A Luoi, Thua Thien Hue, he didn't just show up with a ring. The chemical engineer arrived with a dowry of 10 pigs, a pair of goats, 10 live chickens, two sets of bronze gongs, gold, silver and a cash gift for her parents. His future in-laws were Pa Co people, a subgroup of the Ta Oi ethnic minority, and their wedding customs are not negotiable decorations — they're sacred rites believed to bring ancestral protection to the new household.
The couple's story began in March 2024, when Nick, in Vietnam for a friend's wedding, ordered a bespoke suit from Kim Sieu's tailor shop in Hoi An, where she had moved in late 2023 for a fresh start. She said no to dinner several times; he cycled rice-field roads with her, drove north alone for a week, then came straight back to Hoi An anyway. She set a condition: date for six months, then decide. Six months later he flew back. He proposed in Bali in October 2025, and they married in September 2026.
The wedding itself ran three full days and followed every ancestral ritual. Day one, the engagement rite at the bride's family home with six tables of guests. Day two, the bride's relatives hosted the groom's side at a local restaurant — ten tables — where the couple ceremonially declared a 70-kilogram hog as the gift purifying the marriage before it was prepared for the feast. The pair fed each other quat cakes, sweet pastries symbolising marital harmony, at an ancestral altar.
Day three was the emotional peak: the rite in which the bride formally departs her ancestral lineage for her husband's family. Around clay jars of ruou can, straw-drunk rice wine, elders handed Nick a handwoven brocade cloth said to embody the bride's soul — his to keep as a sign she now belongs to his household. Her family cried. She described it as joy and heartbreak at once.
One detail worth noting: Nick's parents couldn't fly in, so they watched every stage over live video calls from Belgium, and his mother had hand-knitted blankets, bags and wool socks as gifts for her daughter-in-law.
For travellers, this is a lovely reminder of how vivid Vietnam's highland wedding traditions remain — and how far a respectful outsider can go by simply embracing them. A Luoi and the Pa Co heartland sit along the Ho Chi Minh Highway between Hue and the Laos border, an area most visitors rush past. If you're drawn to ethnic minority culture, the central Truong Son region rewards slow travel: weaving villages, straw wine, and food you won't find in Hoi An's old town. Kim Sieu and Nick, for their part, plan to split their time between Vietnam and Belgium — with a tailor-shop meet-cute and a brocade cloth in the family, they're keeping a foot in both worlds.
