An Indonesian Wedding

I have joined the Indonesian Heritage Society, a group of Indonesians and expats who are interested in the learning more about the culture of Indonesia. Today was my first outing with the Explorer's Group. It is a wondeful mix of women from all over the world. I met some new friends from South Africa, Denmark and Japan. Our outing today was at a salon that catered to brides. Not only did they explain the customs of Indonesian weddings but they also had actors act out a typical ceremony in full dress. The customs and ceremony were beautiful. On the day before the wedding parents of both the bride and groom pour scented water over them to make them clean and pure for the upcoming wedding and the parents hand feed their children rice for the last time before they leave them.
On the wedding day tradition holds that the bride and groom may not be who they really are, maybe a spirit has taken over their appearence. To frighten or unmask the possible intruder the couple throws rolled up betel leaves at each other while chanting "for the rest of my life you are my only love and my wife/husband". The groom then steps on an egg to show his acceptance of the resposibility of being a father and husband and then wife washes his foot to demonstrate her faithfulness. The future husband must give all his income to his wife and he symbolizes this by pouring beans into a pocket, he is not supposed to spill the beans as that would be bad luck, then they give the beans to the bride's mother out of respect. Lastly the couple literally crawls on their knees over to each of their set of parents, this is called Sungkeman and they bow and kiss the hand of their parents to show respect and love.
I reflected on how much of the ceremony was spent showing respect to the parents. How different from our own culture where often the parents walk the child down the aisle and that is the last we see of them in the ceremony. The real treat in seeing all this is that even if we were invited to a real Indonesian wedding, we would not see this part of the ceremony, we would only see the more public prayers and then reception, as most of what I saw today is done privately with the family. It was a wonderful and respectful view into the importance of family in Indonesia