An Insight Into An Indonesian Wedding – Semarang Style

Yesterday, one of the Semarang Blogging Community members, Mizan, invited me to witness an Indonesian Wedding.

He literally asked me that morning – the day of the wedding!

I was a bit shocked because a question like that is virtually non-existent in western society, and after he insisted (after talking via Adi, who I’m staying with), I thought that I don’t get invited to an Indonesian Wedding every day!

And that’s the whole point of this entire trip – seeing the real Indonesia.

Since the timing was a bit short notice, Ari, also from Loenpia, quickly brought me one of this batik shirts to wear.  This is what men traditionally wear to such weddings when invited as guests.

Anyway, this is roughly how an Indonesian Wedding works (well in this case, a traditional Javanese one).

First of all there is a ceremony.  Unfortunately, I missed this because Ari was caught in a traffic jam when he was buying me the batik shirt, so unfortunately I cannot tell you what happened in this case!

There are a number of complicated rituals that occur (about 7 steps). If you want to know more, you can translate this page from Wikipedia (in Indonesian).  But in a nutshell, there the spiritual jist is that there is a transfer of responsibility from the parents to the bride and groom.

But the reception is something else.

The bride and groom, with their respective parents and immediate family, are on a stage for photos and greetings.  They are all dressed in traditional Javanese clothing.

Photos are taken with each and every single guest/family group. And I literally mean, every single guest.

Since I was an invited guest, the same applied to me!

Instead of presents, money is donated so that the costs of the wedding and reception can be covered.

This was a relatively small wedding by Javanese standards – only about 700 guests were present at this wedding.

Sometimes, they reach 2000-3000 guests!  I’ve been to some large Italian weddings in my time (some of which where I didn’t even know the bride or groom), but these Indonesian Weddings put these to shame!

There are no seats and tables at the reception. Everyone stands up, and goes to a number of food stalls to eat and mingle with each other.  The reception is a fairly social and informal event, and it was bustling for the entire time I was there.

This reception goes on for a large chunk of the afternoon, and guests move in and out of the venue in steady droves.

Like most weddings, there is music played – I heard a variety of songs both in Indonesian and English sung by the band.

However, it’s not often that a foreigner rocks up to one of these events.

Once again, like in other places in Sumatra and Java on this trip, people wanted their photo with me.

I was almost paranoid of stealing the attention away from the bridge and groom.

And there’s also the wedding car!

I very grateful to Mizan for sharing this fantastic opportunity with me – I’ll never forget it!

And I now have a batik shirt to prove it!

To find out more about Indonesian Culture, check out Indonesia – Culture Smart!

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