3 Cultures, 1 day

     Last friday night my dad informed me that we would be going to one of his friends from work's wedding the next morning. I was really scared because it would be a traditional Indonesia wedding, meaning we would go to a Islamic mosque for a mass all spoken in Bahasa with people that didn't know English. I would also have to wear clothes that would cover me from my ankles to me chest. What if I did something wrong? Would they get mad? Do they even want Americans at the service?
     The next morning I got up and got ready. I wore a long blue sundress for the wedding with a grey sweater. I regretted it because it was scorching hot that day but it wasn't like I had a choice. We left by 7:00 a.m. to get there for 8:00 a.m. When we arrived we were greeted by what americans would call the groom's family (I am not sure if they call the wedding couples bride and groom or not. They never told us.) To my surprise all of his family spoke English extremely well, his sister was even an English teacher. The only one who couldn't understand us was the groom's grandfather. Someone translated to me that he said he would just smile and laugh. How cute!!! The bride spoke English too, but her family did not.
     When it was time for the service to begin we entered the mosque and were the only white people there. We also had no idea what was going on. Luckily a nice woman who was the the aunt of the bride tried to communicate with us and show us what to do. There are some major differences between the different religion's weddings. The first being that the bride and groom do not kiss. In fact men and women do not touch at all when they inside a mosque. The second is that the bride and groom actually sign their wedding license paperwork at the wedding where as in America we do it before the wedding.     Another difference is the things that they wear. No very long, flowing gowns. Usually they were very high quality Batik. Batik is a style of clothing many Indonesians wear on a daily basis. You can look it up to see what it looks like. This Batik though, OH MY GOSH. It was so gorgeous. The bride word all white lace Batik with a long headdress, which during the ceremony is wrapped around her new husband too. All of the women on the grooms side wore blue Batik and the women on the brides side wore tan Batik.
     The wedding took about and hour an d after they gave out snacks and a two and a half hour period of time before the reception began. We met a photographer who was originally from Bali. He offered to take us to a Balinese Hindu temple close by. So on our way there I found out that his religion was quite different from the Islam religion the was being practiced at the wedding. Men and women can touch in the temple and sign their wedding documents before the wedding. The temple was created because so many people were moving from the island of Bali to Jakarta and they wanted to have their own places to be with other Balinese temple. There were many Balinese people living around the temple, like one big community.
     We drove for about ten minutes before we arrived at the temple. It was very different from the mosque. Religious statues of what I assumed to be gods were everywhere. the whole outside of area what painted orange with many beautiful and colorful foliage surrounding it. There a lot of little children and a couple of them were playing a really cool instrument that looked like a drum but made the noises of a xylaphone. We stayed there for most of the time in between the mass and the reception because it was so relaxing.
     When we got back to the reception it was everything but relaxing. Their was loud music with people yelling and a bunch of long lines for food. I sat down and many people came over and swarmed me asking for pictures and my name. One even introduced me to her 20 year old nephews ;) After a while they decided I looked like young Brooke Shields. I don't see the resemblance though.  No one had ever seen Americans or any person that was not Indonesian go to a traditional wedding. They were all so grateful that my family and I took the time to come to something we knew was out of our element and was very different from what we were used to. I am glad I went and experienced other cultures from my own. I will be doing a lot of that here:)
-Kaylin