The
House
of Ding.

Meet my wife

• Posted February 23rd, 2009
• by Chris
• 5 comments

Well, our 16-month engage­ment is over. Agnes and I got mar­ried yes­ter­day morn­ing at Ursu­line Chapel in Ban­dung, Indone­sia. Con­sid­er­ing all of the chaos lead­ing up to it, the wed­ding and recep­tion went remark­ably smooth.

The sun ris­ing over the moun­tains out­side my hotel room; 22 Feb 2009.

The day started early for Agnes. She awoke at 2:00 AM so she could get to the salon for her 3:00 AM appoint­ment. I woke up at 5:00 AM and met the photo/film crew at my hotel room at 6:00—and it was a crew. There was the wed­ding orga­nizer and her two assis­tants, two pho­tog­ra­phers, two video­g­ra­phers, and one light­ing tech­ni­cian. It was all a lit­tle surreal.

From the hotel, my dri­ver took me to Agnes’ par­ents house escorted by two police motor­cy­cles. In Ban­dung, the police escort turns an hour drive into 15 minutes.

At Agnes’ house, I met my two stand-in grooms­men (Agnes’ cousins) and they escorted me inside to meet Agnes and her par­ents. Inside, I gave Agnes her hand bou­quet and she pinned my cor­sage. We took more pho­tos and then per­formed a Chi­nese tea cer­e­mony with her par­ents and grand­par­ents. From there, Agnes and I got into the wed­ding car and fol­lowed our police escort to the chapel.

The wed­ding went well. I didn’t screw up the vows or any of my other lines like I had feared. And we both only cried a lit­tle. Even though we protested, Agnes and I released bal­loons and doves on the steps of the chapel after the cer­e­mony. Once again, we climbed into the wed­ding car and fol­lowed the police motor­cy­cles to the recep­tion hall.

The recep­tion was held at the Grand East­ern ball­room in Ban­dung. We esti­mate that just over 400 peo­ple attended. Indone­sian wed­ding recep­tions are very dif­fer­ent from their west­ern coun­ter­parts. They’re almost like an awards show. We entered entered the ball­room in a ‘grand pro­ces­sion’ and were seat­ing on a stage with our par­ents. A pro­fes­sional emcee was hired to lead the whole affair. After a few short speeches, the first of eight courses were served to the guests after the wait staff entered in a parade.

Halfway through our meal, Agnes and I returned to the stage where we cut the cake, had our first dance and a wed­ding kiss—the cue for the con­fetti can­nons. A few more speeches were deliv­ered, pic­tures were taken (the Wid­jaja fam­ily barely fit on the huge stage) and then we lined up to shake 400+ hands. The recep­tion started around 1:00 PM and wrapped up around 3:30 PM. After­wards, Agnes and I headed straight to the photo stu­dio for even more pho­tos. Sev­eral hours later we were finally able to return to the hotel for about 30 min­utes before we met Agnes’ fam­ily for an impromptu fam­ily reunion. It wasn’t until 10 PM that we were able to return to the hotel and get some much needed sleep.

With­out a doubt, the most stress­ful ordeal I’ve ever endured—but so absolutely worth it.