Weddings En Masse: Malang, East Java, Indonesia

By Barrie | December 29th, 2006 | No Comments

Getting married is a fairly serious time of your life, and I think it is a private thing, if you get my drift. I could never imagine getting married with heaps of other couples, but, 17 of them did!.

Mass wedding brings couples together

Love was in the air when 17 couples tied the knot Thursday in Baiturrahman mosque in Malang, East Java.

Outside, a young couple could not hide their disappointment at having arrived moments too late for the event.

“Please help us, I really want to marry Ferdy and my father has given his consent,” Arofah Ida Soraya, 17, said.

She said they did not have the money to arrange their own wedding as their parents had initially been against them marrying.

But, while promising to help the couple out, the head of the city’s religious affairs office, Sudjoko Santosa, said the process could not be rushed as they had to meet the requirements first.

The 17 newly married couples — comprising mostly street singers, construction workers, sidewalk traders, as well as a journalist with a local publication — were blissfully unaware of the young couple’s plight as they rode along in a pedicab parade.

Malang Deputy Mayor Bambang Priyo Utomo said mass weddings gave the poor and uneducated a chance to do the right thing and reduced the administration’s civil registration workload.

(JP/Wahyoe Boediwardhana)