Mentawai / Wedding
The traditional wedding ceremony is a celebration that last for more than three days.
Wedding are not arranged like in the past. The girl and boy decide to get married and do a normal civil marriage. Many families like to still organise and celebrate the traditional wedding to live the tradition.
The family of the boy has to offer a lot of gifts to the family of the girl. The girl’s father decide if the gifts are good and in appropriate quantity. It is a bit of a strange way of dealing for our western way of thinking.
Once the negotiations between the two families are successful, then the wedding ceremony can take place.
The family of the girl will prepare the ceremony. The celebration is one part but the boy family get back home with a lot of presents to be shared with the family that had no option to travel. In my point of view it makes the deal of the day before a bit more equal. During negotiation the girl family did get present and the second day the boy family get a huge part back in different form. The third day the family as well as the new couple come back and then are part of the family forever and are any time welcome.
The wedding is not just a couple matter but a full family matter. All family members participate in one way or the other to the weeding. I was an integrated to the family but I was external observer during the negotiation i.e. According to the traditional wedding rules the boy and the girl are not allowed to meet, not event in public and the partner cannot be taken to the other family before marriage. But today the rules have change and are more like what we know in the western world. We had about two hours canoe ride to visit the village of the boy family. The canoe is big and made of a full tree. It took forty men to carry it from the location in the jungle to the closest river where it was prepared into a canoe.
