HO CHI MINH CITY, June 6-- Thu Oanh, a 62-year-old resident of Vietnam's southern Ho Chi Minh city, felt so embarrassed after he received four invitation cards from her friends and relatives to attend their children's wedding parties.

"I was glad when I received the invitation cards as I realized that my friends' children have grown up and are now getting married. However, I was at a loss whose wedding to attend since if I go to all the four parties, they will cost me almost all my monthly pension,"the retired primary teacher told Xinhua.

Traditionally, the Vietnamese people used to hold the wedding parties for their children in spring time, i.e. during lunar January and March, which is considered the season of love and due to the nice weather. But nowadays young couples change that custom a lot and hold their weddings any time of the year.

The retired teacher said that going to the wedding very often truly upset her. "Many times I received several invitation cards within one month and they were such a big burden to me,"she said.

Since the late 1998, the Vietnamese government has issued regulations to encourage people to hold modest weddings to save money and time. However, as these regulations are not yet put into laws, many people do not implement them strictly.

In urban areas, the wedding is normally held with lots of outdoor activities that cost a huge amount of money and time. In the rural areas, a wedding always means a big banquet and an occasion for the guests to"repay" their debt to the host.

Fifty-five year old Huynh Tan Long, director of a private company specializing in trading medical appliances in District 1 here, said he had to pay mostly for his son's wedding a few months ago. "My son and daughter-in-law paid only a part for their wedding costumes, photographs and video taping of the party, while I had to pay for the rest. These include three traditional rituals including a pre-engagement visit to my son's in-law family, an engagement ceremony and the wedding party. In addition, I had to buy some new furniture to decorate the newly-wed's room,"Long said.

He said that he had spent over 200 million VND (roughly 10,000 U.S. dollars) to cover his son's wedding. "It was really a burden to me, but I could not do otherwise because this has been the tradition in Vietnam and you will just have to follow,"Long said.

Professor Tran Lam Bien, a Vietnamese researcher on folk culture, said that traditional wedding and funeral rituals have long been practiced in Vietnam and have become national cultural identities. However, with social and economic development, those practices have changed, both in positive and negative way, and greatly burdened parents of both the groom and bride.

Thu Huong, 28, from the northern Vinh Phuc province, said that it took her parents and herself three years to repay the debt that they had borrowed to spend on her wedding. "I am the eldest daughter of four brothers and sisters, so my parents decided to hold a big wedding for me,"Huong said, adding that her parents prepared for 100 six-seat dining tables to invite around 600 guests, mostly relatives, friends and co-villagers. "My parents are farmers and they do not have much saving money, so they have to borrow the needed sum from relatives, even from the village's support fund for the poor people, to pay for all services in my wedding,"Huong said.

She said that after three days of partying, all the host and guests were so tired, and the amount spent by them reached over 100 million VND (roughly 5,000 U.S. dollars), far surpassing our initial estimation of around 60 million VND.

Huong said that the gifts that her family and herself received from their guests were worth only half of the sum that they spent, adding that she even had to delay child bearing since she had to repay the debt together with her parents. "If I could re-do it, I would tell my parents not to spend beyond our means for our wedding so as not to incur debts,"she said.

In fact, because of modernization and enlightened citizenry, most young Vietnamese couples now want to discard the old customs and opt for modest wedding.

Minh Loan, a 27-year-old reporter of a newspaper here, said that she and her fiancee decided to hold a simple wedding. "We want a simple wedding and invite only our close friends and relatives. But after the wedding, we intend to have our honeymoon abroad and that's where we intend to spend the money saved from an expensive wedding,"Loan said.