zung depression scale: SATURDAY'S WEDDING

Hi guys.

It felt so long not to be able to post something, let's say for around 10 hours? hahaha, I am getting more and more addicted to sharing unimportant stories now :p

I went to a wedding today. Well, actually since it's the wedding of my sister in law's sister, so we ( I and my small family) were invited to stay over at a hotel five-minute-drive from the wedding venue last night, therefore it wouldn't take us too long to get ready for the ceremony and reception.

It is normal for Indonesian families (middle class level and up) to hold a wedding ceremony and reception either in the morning or in the evening. Usually, the couple getting married prefers to just rent a venue (normally around hotel ballrooms, halls, or other types of building that can be rented) so that they wouldn't have to bother preparing food and beverages for the guests, and also for cleaning up the mess after the event finishes. But there are also families that would rather hold this kind of event in their own homes, particularly due to the time and budget reasons. When we decide to use / rent a venue, there is always a limited time, and for a pretty high cost depending on where you want to hold your wedding reception. Like what happened today, the venue was booked from morning to around 2 in the afternoon, it was held at Balai Sudirman, Pancoran. It is also known amongst Jakartans that Balai Sudirman offers you big budget packages only. Outnumbering it, probably top-notch hotels such as the Sultan or Ritz Carlton can offer you similar packages with even bigger budgets.

The wedding ceremony started at 8 and ended at around 9-ish. There were a number of ceremonial stuff to be done. The bride's family is from Lampung and the groom's is from Palembang (both are the southern part of Sumatra).

The reception was supposed to have started at 11 PM, but unfortunately because of other ceremonial things, it began at 12, so the guests only had around one hour only to congratulate the wedding couple and to have meals.

When you attend a typical Indonesian wedding, the point is that you need to come to a certain place, prepare and bring an envelope in which you have put a sum of money to be given as a wedding present for the couple, and have meals there.

In most Chinese weddings, every envelope with an amount of money a guest brings to a Chinese Indonesian couple wedding is usually numbered and the guest's name is written and also marked with the same number of the envelope (angpau in Chinese).

In a wedding party, there is usually a lot of different types of dishes, either local or international cuisines. At the one I attended today, they served sushi, rice and fish and beef and chicken, steamboat, kebab, wrapped tuna, pudding, cakes, fruit and vegetable salad, grilled lamb, etc.

Make sure you have not eaten too much before a wedding reception here, because your tummy will be stuffed after this sort of party.

My family went back home at about three, since we had to wait for other family members who took part in the event. It was honestly tiring, even for us. The ones participating directly in the event must have felt worse :_)

I honestly took lots of pictures of my daughter but not the couple, my bad :p