The thing about living within a collective culture with a high power distance like Indonesia is that sometimes, in a lot of situations, we must push our personal needs and wants aside to make room for respecting the wishes of our parents, our elders or extended families. Some situation calls for a whole lot of creative thinking, compromise or even sacrifice, even more so in joyous family celebrations such as weddings. There will be times when tradition wins over comfort and familiar faces are replaced by a sea of faces we’ve seen sporadically over the years growing up. There may be even times when all you want is to elope simply to get away from the hassle of it all. But as citizens within this collective culture, we know better than to deny ourselves the blessings of our elders, and so we make it our point to put on our creative thinking caps, include our parent’s wishes into our planning, and throw the wedding we’ve always dreamed of. It may be challenging, but it’s not impossible. And who knows, you might end up with a wedding far better and greater than you’ve ever imagined.
Revano and Stephanie’s wedding in Semarang is a perfect example of that. It started off as a family occasion to celebrate the union of their son and daughter, a reception thrown by their parents for their relatives and acquaintances. It could have easily been something so “not them” and they could have just been two pretty people on stage who everyone congratulated. But they inserted the little details on that day to make it still “theirs”. They brought along their toy collection, prints that they loved, little ornaments that identified who they are. Combine those stuffs with customary traditions and the extensive buffet of local delicacies that their parents loved, every local delicacy in Semarang you can think of, food from Stephanie’s family restaurant “Godong Salam”… it was a wedding you didn’t want to miss! Traditions don’t make everything boring. In fact, it’s the challenge to make it uniquely ours is what’s so fun about it!
Congratulations again to the happy couple!
Cheers,
Paulus
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