A Sumatran wedding

The bride's family coming from Sumatra, the wedding was held in traditional style with a grand post-nuptual reception at the Indonesian Embassy yesterday to which a huge number of friends and acquaintances of the Embassy staff were invited. The wedding, that had actually taken place privately at the Mosque the previous day, was repeated during this reception for the education of their guests, the Indonesian Ambassador and his wife being our host and hostess, with the ladies of the Embassy involved in five days of food preparation beforehand.

At twelve noon, closely watched by the assembly, the Indonesian ladies in their best kabayas and shawls and many of them, including two beautiful little girls, also wearing a hijab (aka tudung), the two families processed slowly towards an elaborately decorated central arched gateway from diagonally opposite directions, preceded by musicians in white, playing bamboo flutes and drums. Male representatives of the families then addressed one another in an exchange of repartee, reciting what the announcer called "limericks", i.e. funny rhymes which made the Indonesian guests (who could understand them) laugh. Then followed a ritual display of self defence from a young man of the bridegroom's family, ceremonially "fought" by a member of the other clan, to show that the groom's people were of worthy, courageous stock. At the end of the bout the black-clad combatants politely bowed to one another, hands together. The groom was then permitted to put a lei of flowers around his bride's neck, and arm-in-arm they slowly proceeded towards the stage at the front of the hall where there were seats on either side for the parents of the couple as well as for a beautifully adorned little child from each family. These children had golden feathers in their black hair.

Presentation of the wedding gifts followed, traditionally such things as jewelry, footwear and lingerie from friends of the bride, if I heard correctly, and a dance of welcome by young girls wearing long, curved, golden, artificial nails to make their hands more expressive. They wore collars of red velvet studded with gold and matching headbands, vibrant silk tunics and sarongs finely brocaded with gold threads and had belts of gold around their waists. Nisa, one of my Indonesian friends at the reception, whispered to me that Sumatra, the nearest part of Indonesia to the Malay peninsula, is famous for its goldmines. The bride's hands participated in the dance, although the rest of her stood still as she watched the other girls; I expect she used to be exactly such a dancer before she became a married woman. Symbolically, a lady came up to the podium bearing a petal-strewn tray on which the bride had to place her own dancing nails, the lady helping her remove them from her finger tips. Thus she leaves her youth behind, explained the announcer, adding an ad lib comment (because Tasha was smiling broadly): "She's happy!"

Towards the end of the ceremonials the young couple knelt before each set of parents, pressing their faces to the parents' knees as a gesture of devotion, trust, or obedience, call it what you will. Both mothers (mothers-in-law) became tearful at this touching moment and all four parents instinctively stroked or patted the shoulders of the young couple with great affection as they did this. (My picture here is of the bride's family looking across at the in-laws.) Then the roles were reversed; each pair of parents came forward to feed the bride and groom morsels of food from a spoon. It seemed a bit of an anti-climax to have a Western style cutting-of-the-wedding-cake ritual straight after this, but the press photographers surged forward en masse, as if this were the climax of the proceedings. The cake was decorated in English; the icing said: "Daniel and Tasha, January 11th, 2009.") The wedding ended with another demonstration from the dancing girls, announced as the Umbrella Dance. (They twirled red parasols, and that was all I could see of this one, not tall enough to look over the heads of the people in front of me—and the dancers themselves were even shorter than I.)

For the bride and groom there was no sitting down to lunch just yet, for they finally had to stand in a reception line and shake hands with every guest in turn, as we were all requested to step up and congratulate them. The poor bride who may have been supporting more than 2 kg of solid gold on her head, if my information is correct, and who was surely hungry as well, became pale and dizzy after about an hour of this ordeal and had to be supported herself. Meanwhile most of us had been tucking in to Indonesian specialities from food stations spread around three sides of the hall, a meal that was magnificently well organised.