My thesis investigates contemporary weddings in Thailand, which may be understood as belonging to a hybrid culture shaped by the mixture of Western and traditional Thai culture. By using hybridity as a key concept through which to investigate weddings and their elements, I examine them on three levels: first, at the level of forms and spaces; second, at the level of processes and expressions; and third, at the level of significations, understood as the relationship between signifier and signified.The interpretation is based on anthropological cultural analysis of collected material relating to weddings and marriage, drawn from a range of historical and contemporary sources provided by wedding experts, including wedding magazines, wedding packages, menus, wedding photography, pre-wedding photography, video and film. The final analysis focuses on key wedding elements and their ritual processes as exemplified in wedding ceremonies.The thesis is organised around my argument that weddings and their elements are no longer constituted primarily as a category of ritual, but rather belong to the category of the image. Every aspect of the contemporary Thai wedding can be understood as having been reduced to components of images as captured through photography and videography. I argue that all elements are made to pursue ‘the image’, and that this image is established both in actual spaces and in photographic spaces.Following this argument, I first present the structure of wedding space through selected key elements, which I categorise as Body, Objects and Spaces. I then reveal the complexity of the hybrid through these selected elements and the authority structures that organise them.

Damnoen completed his PhD at the Architectural Association after beginning the programme in 2016. He received his MA from the Faculty of Architecture, Chulalongkorn University, where he also worked in historical mapping and as a teaching assistant in architectural psychology and phenomenology. Since 2012 he has taught and conducted research at Chiang Mai University. He has also practised as an architect and graphic designer. His research focuses on place, hybridity, semiotics, contemporary culture and cultural anthropology.