WEB CHUTNEY

A photographer namely Hai Le Cao got really inspired by the story of a poor Vietnamese couple and decided to give them a gift of a lifetime by capturing their wedding day!

This couple isn’t new and has been married since 80 years now. Hai Le Cao met the lovely couple on a boathouse where they live on Red River in Hanoi.

He learned about how they first met and fell in love and got so inspired that he threw them a wedding to celebrate their 80 years of being together.

As youths, Thanh and Thuy, were both homeless orphans who lived in poverty, both of them are trash collectors who fatefully met on June 2, 2024 at a landfill site.

Thanh has the date tattooed on his arm to represent the day that changed their lives.

They both fell in love and soon moved in together, they were nomads who moves from one place to the other but finally decided to settle down on an islet on the Red River called Bai Giua.

This elderly but lovely couple took the responsibility of taking care of the dead bodies that have shown up on the river over the years.

They live simply and don’t have any valued possiesion, infact there most valued possessions are two smoking pipes, they use these to smoke a special rainforest tobacco “thuoc lao”

They keep two pipes to avoid a fight

“It’s good to have two [pipes] because we will not have to fight.”

The photographer Cao learned that the two never thought of celebrating with a wedding, but he talked the couple into it.

He took it upon himself to plan a wedding for Thanh and Thuy and even captured the special day with his camera.

Cao described the lovebirds as an “open-minded” and “extremely lovely” couple.

This post originally appeared here