After having dated for exactly one year, M. Supriadi, 21, planned to marry his girlfriend, Nur Aisyah, 20, on Valentine’s Day.

Wearing traditional white West Javanese clothing, the couple tied the knot at the Palmerah Religious Affairs Office (KUA) in West Jakarta on Thursday, attended by several family members from West Java and Jakarta.

In Indonesia, Muslim couples must go to the KUA before registering their marriages with the Civil Registration Agency (Dukcapil). Non-Muslims can go straight to the agency.

“I set this date on purpose so that it would be easy to remember. I hope that our relationship would last until we turn gray,” Supriadi told The Jakarta Post after their Islamic matrimonial ceremony that morning.

Although he had been preparing for their wedding day since last year, Supriadi still looked nervous during the ceremony. The penghulu (Muslim wedding officiant) had to ask him to recite his wedding vows several times because he repeatedly mispronounced Nur’s father’s name.

“I’m a little bit nervous, but it was great, right?” Supriadi asked of his bride.

After Supriadi and Nur were finished being wed, Husnoridho, 30, and Velisia Partana, 35, entered the room with their family members who had come from Central Java and Bali. Unlike the previous couple, this one had no specific plan to get married on Valentine’s Day.

Husnoridho, who arrived earlier than Velisia, said they had been dating for five years, their actual wedding happened suddenly.

Unlike Nur who looked fresh from a beauty salon, Velisia had donned a simple Balinese kebaya and had applied her makeup herself.

“We didn’t plan it to be today initially. We wanted to get married at the end of this week, but many of our family members were unable to attend, so we chose Valentine’s Day,” Husnoridho said, adding that he and his wife would hold a wedding reception in another building on the same day.

Jakarta’s Dukcapil records that Feb. 14 is the second favorite date to get married.

Last year, 40 couples tied the knot in Jakarta on Valentine’s Day, while 59 couples got married on Aug. 8 because the date can be written: 8.8.2018.

East Jakarta and North Jakarta were the areas where most couples get married on Feb. 14 last year, with 11 and 10 couples respectively.

“They choose the date because it would be easy to remember. It’s a trend,” Sapto Wibowo, the head of the population division at Jakarta’s Dukcapil, said on Thursday.

Valentine’s Day celebrations have been banned in many cities across Indonesia, home to 225 million Muslims. The regional authorities often say Valentine’s Day is not part of Indonesian culture and they associate it with casual sex.

On Wednesday, Bogor Regent Ade Yasin urged residents not to celebrate Valentine’s Day, citing the first reason.

In South Tangerang, the administration also issued a circular for students to not celebrate Valentine’s Day, saying that celebrating it did not align with religious values.

“Love must be truly born and grown from pure intentions and in line with religious teachings,” the head of the South Tangerang Religious Affairs Ministry Office, Abdul Rojak, said as quoted by Tribunnews.com.

The Bekasi Education Agency also issued a letter prohibiting students from celebrating Valentine’s Day inside or outside of school.

In Depok, the call to not celebrate the day was still in place despite no circular having been issued about it this year.

Depok Education Agency official Mulyadi said that they had issued circular last year, banning students from celebrating Valentine’s Day. “Basically the ban is still in place,” he said as quoted by tribunnews.com.

However, the Jakarta administration has never banned Valentine’s Day celebrations, even though some Islamic organizations urged the administration to do so. (ggq)   

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