Getting married in Yogya

  Yogyakarta, Indonesia
Tuesday, February 12, 2008

At the start of February, I was delighted to receive an invitation to the wedding of two deaf friends here. The bride is from Yogyakarta and a member of Matahariku. The groom is from Solo and a member of Gerkatin - although he had been spending a lot more time in Yogya recently!

Even the smallest weddings in Java tend to be

Spectators

large affairs, and it is not uncommon to find yourself going to the wedding of someone you don't know, simply because you know someone who has been invited.

But my invitation, given to me by the bride, felt no less special for this, and what's more, I had just the right outfit for the occasion, a blue batik shirt that I had purchased just one week earlier.

It was a dry, warm, cloudy day.

An egg to the brow

We were told the proceedings would start at 11am, and as Uki and I arrived at the village at 10.55am we were just in time to see the last two minutes of the legal ceremony. The bride and the groom then left.

But not to worry, they had merely stepped off stage (as it were) for a change of costume. In the meantime we had a seat and a look around. A large canopy had been erected in front of the house of the bride's family, and something like 100 people were sat beneath it,

Washing the feet

all tucking into the first of several boxes of snacks.

The re-entry of the bridal party was quite something - the bride and groom were now both very elegantly attired in green, and were carefully instructed to undertake several traditions on their way back to centre-stage.

The first tradition involved the bride pressing to the forehead of her new husband an (unbroken) egg in a plastic bag. The bag is, I assume, a later addition,

Sharing the burden

designed to mitigate the effects of any unwanted cracking. The bride then washed one of her husband's feet with water and flower petals.

They then both had to stand on a yoke, which is usually hauled by the water buffalo that prepare and maintain the paddy fields. In this case, happily, there was not a single water buffalo to be seen. This signifies the burden of life, I was told, which is equally to be shared by both members of the party.

Finally there were two coconut husks filled with flowers that had to be kicked over.

Once this had been

Bridge and groom upstanding

accomplished, the couple were free to enter a small area with a richly screened backdrop that had been created just inside the front of the house, looking out over those assembled. As they shared their first meal of rice, a man spoke very quickly for ten minutes in Javanese.

Now, Javanese has four different levels, and which one you use depends on your own status, and the status of the person you address - unsurprisingly, it is very difficult to learn!

A spot of lunch

It is the local language for most people in Java, but none of the deaf people - including the bride and groom - can understand it. This concluded with a short prayer, then the karaoke kicked off, and we started on our lunch.

The bride and the groom spent the next three hours standing and sitting, and standing again, diligently greeting all of the guests who approached them at random intervals.

With parents of the bride

Before the passing of an hour, the majority of those present had gone home, and then... all the bride and groom's deaf friends arrived!

This was very predicable - deaf people everywhere seem to turn up late and stay to the end - and though unplanned, it all happened seamlessly, as these things are wont to do, with new boxes of lunch passed round to sate the hunger of newcomers.

As we left, at 4pm, the chairs were being stacked, the rubbish swept away. The bride and the groom and their families then all went to Solo,

At the front

where the whole thing was repeated at the groom's family home the next day! Some of the guests from the Yogya gathering also attended the gathering in Solo (though once was enough for me).

I couldn't but compare all this with a typical wedding back home. For a start, I would expect a British bride and groom to react rather strongly to the arrival of guests they had never met before!

One of the key elements of a British wedding is the opportunity to celebrate the relationship with family and friends. At the weddings I have attended back home, the arrangements have been at the behest of the bride and groom as, through the years, British couples are presented with ever more choices about how they wish their day to pass.

Among the bright outfits, fabulous make-up and intriguing traditions of a Javanese wedding, the emphasis is different.

Deaf guests

On a scale of importance, the need to respect, honour and cater for the communities local to both families seems to figure highly, along with the need to meet local ceremonial customs as lavishly as the budget allows - and some weddings here are very grand indeed.

But no matter what the grand total, the role of the couple marrying is the same - they spend most of the ceremony getting hot and under scrutiny, greeting guests passively with palms flat against each other held in front of the chest. Photographs are important, but there is little to no opportunity to speak with the guests.

Well, it was great to be there, and really interesting to watch. As a thankful guest, with no intention of becoming a groom over here, the bride's mother gave me a lovely big hug, and I went home for a nice cup of tea.