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| Omar - Arvin - Selena - Vito - Emyr |
Day 1
My second-eldest brother, Vito, is getting married! He is the first one out of the five children in my family to get married and the whole family had been pretty busy these last few weeks preparing for the wedding. The wedding itself is held in Jambi, Jambi -- the hometown of his then-fiancée. The wedding is held on May 21st, 2017 and the reception are held the next day, May 22nd, 2017. As the whole shindig is happening on the weekend, we were only able to fly out to Jambi early Saturday morning. Emyr and I were having a hectic finals week and the rest of the family were also still busy with their own things. Only Da Vito, my mom and my dad that had flown out to Jambi in the preparation of the event. That Saturday morning, us remaining four siblings and the rest of the extended family (we counted at least there's 21 of us who flew out that day, not including other family members from Padang, my hometown, and other family friends) gathered at Soekarno-Hatta International Airport and took off to Jambi. That was personally my first time ever visiting the province and it was a new experience for me.
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| Thank God Netflix is now available offline! Emyr spent watching The Matrix the whole flight while I started on my Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt Season 3 marathon. |
After arriving at Jambi Sultan Thaha Airport, our group then went off to Hotel Abadi Suites where all the crew from Da Vito's side of the family gathered. We arrived at 10.00 am-ish and have a couple hour to rest before heading out to the wedding ceremony in the afternoon. My family end up using all my Tony Moly face masks as they figure out the wonder of a cold, dampen packs and how amazing it felt after being exposed under the blazing Jambi sun. As 14.00 pm strikes, we began preparing ourselves for the ceremony with all-white uniforms.
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| Da Vito and his older twin, Da Arvin |
------------------------------ aaaaaand SAH! ------------------------------
Day 2
The reception in Jambi is planned out to be an all-day event. I scheduled myself to attend the reception until 12 p.m. and I was scheduled to leave Jambi at 14.20 p.m. because I still have my last final exam on the next day. So we started off early for the wedding party that started out from 10.00 a.m. until 17.00 p.m. and from early in the morning (even before breakfast is available at the dining hall!) I have to get my full makeup face on. Being drowsy from the lack of sleep and after a KFC withdrawal (I had KFC delivered to my room last night as I was so hungry and no driver picked up my GoFood order, hence I have to call the nearest fast food chain available for delivery), that was such a struggle for me. Good thing I got all excited once I finished a couple round of breakfast meals at the buffet, lol.
After a few photoshoot with the male family members in their suit and the female with their all-silver attire (except for my parents, my grandfather, my siblings and I who went out in a thematic gold and maroon outfits), we proceed to go to the reception building. We were greeted by a traditional dance crew and percussion team on the field until we were 'welcomed' by the bride's family to enter the building. They were using Jambi, Padang and Sunda traditions all up in the wedding and I was pretty much just a spectator haha. We spent almost 30 minutes out in the field and I swear if that is not my brother standing right in front of me I might just run to the nearest supermarket and buy a cold pack of Coca-Cola just to beat off the heat. I also forgot to bring my sunscreen so the struggle is really real, y'all.
Finally, the two lovebirds meet up and walked together to the reception stage.
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| Les parents standing by to greet the guests. |
Lot's of familiar people flew out for this occasion and we are very thankful for everyone's effort, thoughts, and prayers. I was surprised that the reception that we held out of town felt somewhat like a reception in Jakarta from what we see from the guest list. I sort of wished they also held a reception in Jakarta so that some of my friends and extended family friends can also come and celebrate hehe.
Anyways, congratulations Da Vito and Uni Puni! Hope you two become a peaceful (sakinah), happy (mawaddah) and loving (rahmah) family. It is a sad thought that my brother is leaving home to live with his new family but I'm excited to have an additional member of the family. It has yet to feel real as we're still busy with our lives as there's so many things to do right after this wedding. I am also happy to have added another Indonesian province to my list, and Jambi was a very nice town, to begin with. All my prayers to you two!
P.S.: Now that one of the five siblings is married the "kapan kawin?" question is popping out more often, even for me the fourth-borne. Well... all I can do is to hope and pray that I soon follow their footsteps once I found 'the one'. But before that, I got to first finish my thesis graduate law school and the deadline is getting closer, cloSER and CLOSERRR AAAAAAAA!
