A Thai woman who got stood up at the altar by her boyfriend of six years is now suing him for moral and financial damages. In his defence, the man said he never showed up at his own wedding because he couldn’t afford to pay the dowry set by her family.

26-year-old Boonyang Sawatdee and his long-time girlfriend, Arunee Jaengkrachang, 24, were supposed to get married in the bride’s home village of Khao Din, Thailand’s Kabin Buri district, on October 22, but the groom never showed up. The day before the wedding, the couple met with the bride’s parents to make the final preparations for the wedding party and the groom showed no symptoms of “cold feet”, but on Sunday morning, he failed to show up at the agreed time, and so did all of his relatives, which really made everyone suspicious.

Photo: Bangkok Post

Seeing that Boonyang was running late, the bride and her family tried calling him to find out what was going on. When he finally answered his phone, he told them that everything was ok, but that he wanted to postpone the wedding by a few hours, because he wasn’t going to make it in time. Left with no other options, the bride let everyone know that the big event was going to take place at 9 am, instead of 6.

The hours passed, but the groom and his family were nowhere to be found, so an angry Arunee tried phoning him again, but this time he never picked up. Desperate to get an explanation, the young bride-to-be and her family travelled to his home in the nearby town of Sa Kaeo, but there was nobody there to talk to. Both the groom and his parents had fled.

The bride’s family later learned that Boonyang couldn’t afford to pay Arunee, even though the two families had previously agreed that the dowry was to be set at 200,000 Baht ($6,025) in cash and five-baht weight of gold. It’s not clear whether the man just didn’t have the courage to tell them that it was more than he could pay, or if he planned to raise the money and failed to do it before the wedding, but the bride’s family doesn’t really care, they just want him to pay.

Photo: video screenshot

Arunee’s family claim that they paid over 100,000 baht for the wedding party and still owed the caterer around 22,000 baht for the food, so they have filed a complaint against Boonyang Sawatdee and his family, and have already contacted a lawyer to sue him for damages.

After realizing that her husband-to-be had left her at the altar, and that she had to tell the guest that the wedding was off, Arunee started crying and almost fainted. She was so embarrassed of having been stood up on her wedding day that she quit her at a factory in Samut Prakarn.

Coconuts Bangkok reports that Boonyang is the second groom to make news headlines in Thailand this year for failing to show up at his wedding. A few months ago, another man called off the wedding at the last minute because his family didn’t agree to pay his bride’s dowry.