Wedding Fever

Our wedding: 1 afternoon, £107.50, excl. lunch.
Nieces wedding: 1 day, £15,000, incl. lunch.
Bali wedding: 4 days, 1 pig, incl. lunch (unless jewish or muslim!).

Our wedding: bride, groom, 4 guests, 30min ceremony 4 hour party.
Nieces wedding: bride, groom, 100 guests, 2 hour ceremony, 8 hour party.
Bali wedding: bride, groom, 1000 guests, 2 hour ceremony, 4 day party.

Ok, you could argue that hen/stag nights are a party on a different day to the ceremony and that a honeymoon could be classed as a party but you get the idea.

So one of our girls, Kadek (yes she has a real name but since she's only been working here a year I still don't know what it is), gets married. We are invited to attend on 2 of the party days that follow the ceremony.

Day 1:  Our invitation is verbal - "be there at 5:30pm, dress up". I assume this means I have to wear a skirt again. At 5:28pm a group of us are standing outside the grooms house synchronising watches. It seems that in order to accommodate the magnitude of guests one has to allocate 20 minute slots per 10 guests (so in 10 hrs you can see [3 slots*10 hours*10 people] 300 people) which doesn't include the static entourage of 50 family members all milling about giving out cups of tea and cigarettes. Now by popular agreement it is precisely 5:30 and we can enter. The bride and groom greet us at the entrance - actually they've been standing there since 08:00am and look ready to collapse but they put on brave faces, we say hi and are ushered through to a table for our tea & cake. Sitting there, I get the feeling that everyone is looking at us - silly me, they are looking at us! We smile & wave & stare down the children who only know one word of english (hello) and insist on using it constantly - after 10 minutes I'm ready to snap, luckily I get a poke in the ribs by some toothless hunchback who urges me to move to the next table. This turns out to be the 'exit' platform where we sit for a respectful 10 minutes before leaving. On the way out it appears we have passed some test and are invited to tomorrow's bash as well. "7:00pm, casual".

Day 2:  This is more like it, the band is setting up in the front garden, a huddle of menfolk with big wedges of cash (probably worth a pound) play a gambling game of what could only be described as 3D dominoes. A 50 gallon drum of stinky, home made alcohol stands in the middle of the grounds surrounded by - waiters? - who beckon you to try a glass. A plastic jug is plunged into the barrel, the frothy scum on the surface parts exposing the semi-clear liquid beneath and we are poured a glass of stuff that smells like a maggot infested gamekeeper's crow but if you hold your nose it tastes ok. As we haven't eaten yet we restrict ourselves to an unusually puritanical 4 glasses.
The band starts to play so in true pop festival tradition we push through to the front where 50 people have taken to the dance floor. 5 women (and I use the term loosely) take the lead. The band reaches fever pitch & the ladies drift off into a maniacal trance and start to really let their hair down - good job there are 3 supporting hairdressers associated with each prima-donna ready with pins/bones/barbed-wire to try and pin it back. We stand there open mouthed as the dance moves on to the next phase where the ladies plunge swords into their bosoms - I don't see any blood so I assume it's safe, I mean, they wouldn't, would they? The music stops abruptly, the spent women are dragged off taken away and we leave before dance 2 in case we get roped in and have to bite the heads of a few live chickens/bats/geckos - although, I am rather hungry...

Only one picture for this episode, but it's an S95 dammit. The boss is so impressed by our performance he's given us a bonus of going halves on a camera.
Oh, go on then. Here's some of the very first shots from said camera.

One is of our friends Robin & Chez who popped over for a week and are standing by the road to our land.  The other is a view of Menjangan Island from our boat. Nice eh?