Railway Tourism: Experiencing the Malay Wedding

I was practically on my feet for the whole day during the second day in Bukit Gantang. Woke up nearly to join others in Lenggong Food Festival, went back to Mak Tok’s house for local fruit feast and a walk around the village. One would have thought that I would have dropped dead by night, but I was still hyped up for the next agenda on our iterinary: mock wedding.

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Our homestay host has taken the trouble to throw a mock wedding for us where almost all of us participated to make it work. 🙂 I believe in Malay, you call it the the spirit of ‘gotong-royong’.

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Members of the media and participants alike arrived early at the venue dressed in traditional clothes provided by our respective foster family.

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Blogger friend Wendy, posing in front of the dais before the arrival of the mock bride and groom.

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Here is the picture taken during the ‘bersanding’. The bride is our media friend from Iran while the groom is a student from Indonesia. The best man and bridesmaids are from Somalia and Indonesia. Wendy and I on the other hand, played flower girl during the ‘adat merenjis’ session. 🙂 Pretty cool, huh? Bride from Iran, groom and bridesmaids from Indonesia, best man from Somalia and flower girls from Malaysia. This is what I call unity through culture. Everyone played a part to make things work.

The mock wedding is one of the most wonderful thing in have experienced during the trip with Sahabat Media. Even my husband got into his cheeky mood and took a ‘wedding photo’ with me on the dais and pretended that we are the Malay bride and groom for the night too. 🙂 the ‘second time around’ pictures is something I would treasure for the rest of my life. It meant a lot for me.

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The blushing bride and groom at the VIP table for the ‘makan beradap’ with the host who acted as their parents.

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Oh uh…everything started to look real from this point onwards. Lol. Will you just look at that? There is our blushing bride, feeding the groom in a loving manner.

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Food served during the mock wedding. No cutleries were provided and we enjoyed the whole meal like a real kampung folks; eating by using our hands.

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Plain rice

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Fragrant and flavourful nasi minyak

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Curry, roasted chicken and sliced beef in soya sauce. I took a lot of helpings of these, especially the beef in soya sauce. It was simple but distinctively flavourful and marvellous.

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While we were enjoying our food, we were entertained by martial art performance.

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Seni Silat  Gayung performers getting all warmed up.

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I thought it will be like most silat  performance where they just show some artful silat dance.

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But boy was I wrong! It was a full fledge silat  performance and not something on have seen before. It was a real silat  fight with weapons involved. Yours truly practically scream at some point seeing how real it was. My son and husband on the other hand was all excited seeing such an energetic silat  performance for the first time.

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When I thought the night will finally come to an end, our celebrity Sahabat Media friend, Ikhwal hops up on stage and performed some songs for us. Ahhhh…bless the singing traveler. Finally something to calm my nerves a lil bit. 🙂

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Members of the media, participants and guests dancing ‘joget’ with Ikhwal on stage. Yours truly and her hubby joined in the fun too. 🙂 We were really in the mood that night.

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One for the album. Sahabat Media and everyone who were present that night during the mock wedding.

It was a truly memorable experience for me and my family, and experiencing the Malay wedding not just as guest but as a flowergirl is indeed something I would treasure for as long as I live. 🙂

Our trip did not just end here, there is still more for me to tell. Do stay tune yea?

3 comments

  1. Nazlan says:

    It was indeed a memorable night…glad that this kind of activities being presented to the homestay participants…it certainlt share some lights about Malay wedding and culture to the international students. The folks at Bukit Gantang was truly amazing. Will definitely make a trip again to my foster family homestay.

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