We always watched with a huge smile on our faces whenever we witness a couple exchange wedding vows. Our hearts are filled with joy as we watch the groom kisses his bride. But what about a wedding that involves a living man and a dead wife? How far would a groom-to-be go to complete the wedding tradition with a dead wife? Is it still love, or mere obligation, or even something else?

The third story, The Gown, from the first of my book – The Horror Wedding Series – tells the spooky experience of Kate, a bridal designer, at her best friend's wedding. The event would haunt Kate for the rest of her life because it wasn’t just any ordinary wedding. It was a wedding of zombies. Of course, that was fiction, but don't we always draw inspiration from real-life? Real-life ghost weddings inspired the story of Kate. One of such ghost stories is the popular story of Chadil Deffy's marriage to his girlfriend, Sarinya Kamsook.


               Source: https://www.bangkokpost.com/life/social-and-lifestyle/274622/till-death-do-us-part

Deffy and Kamsook had met ten years earlier at Eastern Asian University in Thailand, and they had fallen head over heels in love. The couple wanted to get married earlier but decided to postpone the marriage because of Deffy's wish to complete his education before getting married. Kamsook had also been focused on her career, so their equally tight schedules did not allow them to make time for the wedding.

On the third of January in 2012, Deffy, then a TV producer, along with the love of his life were involved in a very tragic motor accident. While the groom was able to escape with minor injuries, Kamsook's injuries eventually led to the loss of her life. She was reportedly killed due to negligence on the part of the hospital where she was taken to. She was allegedly made to wait for over six hours without medical attention despite her severe injuries. As one would expect, Deffy was devastated, but he chose not to live a life of regret by moving on with their plan to get married.

On the fourth of January, 2012, the next day saw the half-alive couple at a Buddhist wedding ceremony. Kamsook, in an unconventional wedding attire, and an even less conventional state of consciousness at her own wedding. The already paling, silent, and very much unbreathing bride was dressed in a white satin strapless thigh-length bridal gown and white fishnet stockings that covered her skin from the feet up. She was even adorned with lace, pearls, and silver. In her gloved hands was a bridal bouquet of red and white flowers. She was a deathly sight to behold, while she was laid to rest on a white sheet covering a raised platform. Deffy, who must have taken care to dress his dead bride, also took care to dress up for the occasion. He was dressed in a black tuxedo with tails and a top hat - the perfect picture of a perfect groom. The groom professed his love to his wife's dead body on nationwide television in Thailand as he slipped a diamond ring onto her unfeeling fingers.


              Source: https://www.cremationsolutions.com/blog/thai-man-marries-dead-girlfriend/2013/03/

Friends and relatives attended the deathly wedding. Some of Deffy's colleagues from work attended the wedding after he posted a makeshift invitation on his Facebook page with a picture of him kissing his dead wife. The wedding/funeral was scarcely different from a normal one, except for the fact that it was conducted between one living groom and a dead bride. Attendees looked on as Deffy kissed his dead bride on her forehead, and they even laid wreaths at her feet.

The fact that people attended and even took laid wreaths for the dead bride is a pointer to the fact that ghost weddings are not uncommon in certain parts of the world. In China especially, there are even extreme cases of dead unmarried women being dug up from their graves to marry recently deceased men. After the exhumation, the newly married dead couple are finally buried together, believed to have secured a safe passage to the underworld. This is a different kind of love, where parents claim they want their child to pass on peacefully or be accepted in the underworld.

In the case of Deffy, it is left to you to decide whether the TV producer was truly a man bereaved of his love or an opportunist who saw a chance at fame. This is due to the publicity he got from the marriage, sharing pictures and videos that went viral. We'll never know for sure, for he insisted that it was his late wife's wish to get married; she also wanted the picture of her corpse to be all over the internet.

After the wedding, the newly-wed groom and a widowed man, at the same time, put up a post on his Facebook page. It said, " In your eyes, our action may seem a great love. But it is a mistake that we could not go back in time to correct. Remember, life is short. Do what you desire, and take good care of the people you love, be they your parents, your siblings, before you never have that chance again when you are still breathing". And it is this thread that we hold onto. If this would be the moral of the story, it simply shows how love could transcend all boundaries, whether the living or the dead.

 

References

Thai Man Marries Dead Girlfriend https://www.cremationsolutions.com/blog/thai-man-marries-dead-girlfriend/2013/03/

Till death do us part https://www.bangkokpost.com/life/social-and-lifestyle/274622/till-death-do-us-part