Two Malay Weddings

When we left for Peru, mom said "maybe you should bring some nice clothes along too."

"Why?" I asked.

"Well, in case you get invited to a wedding" she said.

We lugged our nice clothes around Peru for 6 weeks without using them once, so we left them behind in California before coming to SE Asia, telling each other "invited to a wedding; that's silly. Why did we think we would get invited to some stranger's wedding, anyhow? Where does mom come up with this stuff?"

Well, today we were invited to not one, but two Malay weddings. Mom was right after all.

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A traditional Malay wedding has, apparently, 1000-2000 or more people attending and lasts all day. The bride and groom's families each have seperate, concurrent receptions in different locations where well-wishers show up and leave whenever they like throughout the day. There is a buffet with food, and you can sign the wedding book, eat, and make merry.

At some point during the day the groom and his attendants leave the groom's reception and make their way to the bride's reception. All of the bride's female relations will block his way when he arrives, and he must beg, argue, and, in the end, usually bribe his way past them to gain access to his bride. He then brings her back to his family's reception.

At the first wedding, we were present for this return. Here's what it looked like:


And here's a short video of part of the ceremony:

At a Malay wedding, the bride and groom are called "queen and king for a day", and are, quite literally, treated as royalty. In this video, "bodyguards" are honoring their arrival (in royal dress) with a display of the Malay martial art pencak silat.

Here the procession is trying to get inside, but has again been temporarily barred by female relatives.

Inside the reception room, the couple take their "thrown", and the same group of musicians performed a very beautiful song. Though there isn't much happening in the video, I included it for the music.

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At the second wedding, we arrived after all the excitement, but not too late to be invited to have our picture taken with the bride and groom (which made us very shy). Jen had learned the appropriate phrase for congradulations in Malay, which was a big success.