The Marriage Merry-Go-Round

Around the world, a wedding is perceived as a rite of passage, complete with a beautiful bride and her handsome groom. It is a ceremony that popular culture has helped romanticize for decades and now, a wedding ceremony has become an artistic pursuit of perfection, glamour, elegance – and for those involved in the process, love is, indeed, a many splendored thing. Maggie Tiojakin reports.

Lilis Kurniawan runs around town in her silver Honda Jazz with a long list of errands. First, pick up the wedding dress from the tailor; drop off a pair of wedding rings at the jewelry store for cleaning; meet with a representative from the catering company to go through the buffet menu; meet with a technician to make sure the confetti blowers are placed near the gate, as opposed to the stage; meet with the band to run through a variety of selected romantic interludes.

It’s all in a day’s work, she says.

For a bride-to-be?

“I wish!” she chuckles.

In fact, Lilis is single and has no definite plan to tie the knot any time soon. However, if it looks like she’s preparing for a wedding of sorts, that’s because she is — except she won’t be the one walking down the aisle.

After quitting her previous job as a marketing manager at a multimedia company, Lilis decided to start her own business as a wedding planner. The decision was a no-brainer, she says, considering how much she loves weddings. Yet nothing could have prepared her for the amount of tasks involved in putting together the perfect wedding; like any other rookie in a business, she had to learn mostly by trial and error.

“No, the actual bride is at home and calling me every five seconds with a panic attack.”

“Riana” is one of those girls who used to go to bed dreaming more about her wedding day more than about the man she hoped to marry. On her home office bookshelf, she has a copy of People magazine’s Greatest Weddings Of All Time, published in 2002, featuring — among others — such historical nuptials as those between Prince Charles and Lady Diana, Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston, and Prince Rainier III and Grace Kelly.

A fan of the beloved sitcom Friends, Riana adores Pitt and Aniston’s wedding for its simplicity, elegance, and originality (in the magazine’s special edition, it is said that the couple designed most of the décor and wrote their own vows). And, although her own wedding may never be featured in an international publication, Riana still aims for the stars.

For her wedding dress, she hired a family tailor to replicate Aniston’s slimming halter style, white tulle gown adorned with tiny pearls — detailed to the inch on an online fanzine — complete with the flattering veil.

“It doesn’t come out exactly like Aniston’s dress,” says Riana matter-of-factly, with eight days to go before her wedding. “But it’s something I am proud to wear on my wedding day because I have chosen to not wear what a dozen other women have worn before me.”

The ultimate quest for most prospective brides is finding the right wedding dress, a single-minded pursuit that most bridegrooms find hard to grasp, especially given the dress will be worn once for the duration of no more than 15 hours. Nevertheless, in some cultures, the right dress is said to possess the special power to bring good omens for the married couple – although it generally represents an important fashion statement among brides-to-be.

“They’re all competitive,” observes Hani, an assistant manager at Sophia’s Bridal Boutique. “What bride isn’t? Think about it: You’ve got one day to be the queen at your own party, one day to show the world that you’re the perfect woman for the man you’ve chosen to be your husband, one day to feel like you’re the most beautiful bride on the face of the planet — and the right dress will grant you all of these wishes.”

Of course, the right dress alone won’t be enough. Ideally, it ought to be paired with the right caterer, the right decorator, the right band and a litany of other “rights”: This is where a wedding planner walks in. Lilis likes to think of herself as a professional event organizer who happens to work the business of love, or of making other people’s dreams come true; sometimes she equates her job with that of a marriage counselor, shuttling between bride and groom and their respective families to ensure a smooth procession on D-day.

“I don’t know how the older generation did it back in their day,” says Lilis, noting that her own parents’ plush traditional wedding ceremony had fully relied on the help of friends and family. “Maybe things were simpler then. I mean, they had no use for special effects or elaborate and thematic décor — which are imperative for most modern-day wedding ceremonies, especially in Jakarta.”

To some, modern weddings are not unlike major film productions what with a cameraman sauntering about the room, followed by a crew of half a dozen in charge of the lighting, cord, sound mix, camera mobility, etc — for the wedding video. And there’s more.

An Indonesian wedding has always been elaborate in terms of themes, decoration, entertainment and procession. Details vary from ceremony to ceremony according to one’s ethnic and cultural values; for example, in Chinese culture, red is a color that expresses joy. However, if there’s one connecting thread among all the variables in Indonesian weddings — in both the traditional and the modern sense — it is that nearly all of them have an extensive guest list.

“I’ve been to weddings where the bride and groom look at each other wondering whose hands they are shaking,” says Debby Pangestu, a wedding singer. “Which I think is crazy, inviting all these people you don’t even know!”

She ponders it for a moment. “But I guess how do you not invite all those people in an Indonesian wedding?”

Indeed, more than just a celebration of unity, Indonesian weddings tend to perform other social functions such as family reunions and free entertainment, normally attended by friends, the friends of friends and the friends of friends of friends — the list goes on. The largest weddings creep up to nearly 3,000 guests; the smallest ones can still have up to 300 guests.

Still, the special occasion calls for a special treatment. And, in most cases, it entails a party for party’s sake. In Indonesia, this means abundant food and drinks to match the ever-growing crowd. Unlike Albanian or Mexican weddings where participants tend to care more about shaking their inebriated bodies on the dance floor than about shoving food down their throats, Indonesian weddings are all about eating and talking.

“Food is a major part of wedding ceremonies,” says Lilis. “Choosing a fixed menu from a long list of options can take days, weeks — not counting the food-tasting session. And if you pay attention, people tend to talk about weddings they’ve attended the same way they talk about a restaurant visit: the ambiance, the food, the décor, the crowd.”

And the crowd is a constant source of chatter, for most.

“Going to a wedding is like entering a contest,” says Putri Salika, who owns a restaurant near the Mangga Dua area that is often used for wedding receptions. “People are always looking out for the best and worst dressed, who’s gotten fat and who has lost weight, etc. It can be fun, but it can also be depressing.”

Yet the most perplexing aspect of modern-day weddings is perhaps the inclusion of an outsider — sometimes a whole team — in the construction of the event. Recently, the demand for wedding planners has skyrocketed to the extent their work is considered an art.

In truth, planning for a wedding is as much a business transaction as it is an artistic endeavor. Employing the services of a wedding planner means more than delegating tasks you cannot find the time, or the patience, to complete; or having someone steer your event from start to finish. It also means giving someone else the right to decide what’s best for your perfect moment.

“My fiancé and I agreed from the beginning that we would hire a wedding planner,” says Riana. “Even though our wedding is fairly small, with only 300 guests attending, we felt it would be best to have someone with experience and expertise in this matter who can help us put it together.”

The soul of a modern-day wedding — as several will argue — lies in the minute details, from the selection of music to the menu to the heavily rehearsed entrances and exits. In her three years’ experience as a wedding planner, Lilis has overseen enough wedding processions to draw a conclusion. While several technical aspects can be very different, the underlying philosophy is the same: “Whether you’re dealing with a traditional or modern wedding, the idea is to create something magical within the client’s budget. Even if, for example, all you have to work with is a plank of wood and a lace curtain: You have to make it special. For me, that’s probably the greatest challenge.”

However, not everyone can afford a wedding planner, whose services are known to be rather expensive. For those who prefer – or have no choice – to do their own share of work, fear not: An alternative solution is at Weddingku.com.

Founded in 2002, Weddingku.com claims to be the largest “wedding community” in Indonesia. Boasting daily traffic of more than 15,000 visitors, the site offers millions of page links and thousands of veritable vendors featured on its “collections”. Whether you’re looking for information on “top honeymoon destinations”, “gift registry” or “limousine services”, Weddingku.com strives to compile an extensive range of information available to the curious public at the click of a mouse.

“Before [Weddingku.com] there was hardly any portal you could visit to get the information you need to prepare a wedding,” says Tasmin Hermawan, an employee. “And if there was information, it frequently lacked organization to the point that you wouldn’t be able to extract anything useful out of it. What we do here is provide our customers with everything they need to get a wedding going.”

Each year, Weddingku.com — together with one of the largest event organizers in Indonesia, Dyandra Promosindo — holds the much-anticipated “Jakarta Wedding Festival” between June and July to promote products and services offered by a multitude of vendors that participate in the event. Here, trends are set and standards are raised to the highest as prospective clients browse through the latest collections.

“We also publish Weddingku Diary and Weddingku Catalogue annually,” says Tasmin. “It’s a compilation of ideas and tips from top designers, vendors and wedding organizers.”

According to Tasmin, the past few years have seen some wedding-related businesses flourish more than others, including those that take pre-wedding photographs. The concept of pre-wedding photographs has been around for quite some time, says Tasmin, but a recent spike in market demand has shifted the balance among vendors.

“I don’t know if it’s a phase,” says Tasmin. “Because I remember a time when wedding gowns were headlining the catalogues, followed — a few months later — by wedding cakes and décor. For now, it’s finding the best photographer to immortalize your love.”

It’s little wonder then that most wedding packages offered by bridal boutiques include the services of a seasoned photographer or photo studio to work with their clients in “immortalizing” their Kodak moments wherever the clients choose to go: New York City is an option, as is Bangkok and Cape Town.

“Different couples have different budgets,” says Hani. “I’ve had couples come in here requesting the photographer spend three days in Tahiti with them; others who can only afford to stay in Jakarta — but most people choose to have their pre-wedding photographs taken in Bali or Bandung.”

Bali for the sunsets, Bandung for the green hills. And if a picture does paint a thousand words, then a snapshot of Riana’s piggyback ride with her fiancé in front of the National Monument in Jakarta probably says a thing or two about their love for each other, and their love for the country. Natives of Surakarta, Riana and her fiancé have agreed to hold a traditional ceremony in the morning and a “regular” reception later in the evening — this way, they won’t be disappointing their family or their friends.

“Early in the morning I’ll be wearing a kemben and sit on a stool while my mother bathes me with jasmine water,” says Riana, describing her traditional wedding procession step-by-step. “I think it’s important to honor tradition, even if it seems too much to handle.”

For the ceremony, Riana’s relatives will fly in from Surakarta — some will drive across the island to Jakarta — bearing family heirlooms such as kris, jewelry, and cutlery. Asked about how she and her fiancé came to choose the date, Riana says her parents made the choice according to the Javanese calendar.

“It sounds superstitious, I know,” says Riana. “But this is how it’s done in my family, and this is how it will always be done.”

In Lilis’ opinion, traditional and modern wedding ceremonies are equally meaningful so long as they are done wholeheartedly. Whether one decides to wear traditional costumes or the standard white-gown-and-black-tux has little to do with the commitment the couple has chosen to pledge to each other.

“Trust me,” she says. “The only thing that matters is whether or not you’re ready to take that long walk down the aisle — the rest is just décor.”

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