You read it right. We just got married two weeks ago! It was a dream wedding come true! If I could, I wanted to repeat it, with the same person of course 🙂
Now I am sitting on the couch and just had a call with a now-my husband who is on his 2-week offshore shift. We reflected on what happened two weeks ago. He told me maybe it was a good idea to write about it to help me to process everything (because even a happy thing takes time to process). So, here I am writing about our wedding.
The wedding itself has multiple angles to delve in, let me start from our wedding preparation.
Our wedding is one of many ‘projects’ we have done together. So far, probably the biggest and the most complex one. Other projects were mostly making a rigorous itinerary for vacations. Not only because we enjoy making plans a lot :p but because our type of holidays most of the time involves time-critical activities, such as: making sure that the RV arrived in California from Chicago (3600 km) within 11 days.
Our wedding preparation was complex, for at least three things. First, it was done remotely. Second, it involved a lot of people to travel more than 10000 km to attend. Third, it involved us (two individuals from different nationalities/cultures/backgrounds). During the preparation, a lot of things happened too. He got offshore field assignments in the North Sea, which made the situation even more complicated because it was challenging to communicate when the internet was terrible, and he worked funny hours. I also got extended responsibilities from work with a very steep learning curve, and after work, I often was so tired.
After we got engaged in January last year, we went to Indonesia for a week to be able to get closer to the real wedding scene in Indonesia. We had meetings with multiple vendors face-to-face every day, and we went to several wedding venues. From our ‘field trip’, we first decided on the venue. It was quite easy for us because we knew for sure we did not want to have an indoor wedding and outdoor wedding venue in Jakarta was quite limited.
Then, we decided on the date, which was even trickier because if you asked people to travel 10000km-ish to attend your wedding, you have to give them a heads up at least one year in advance. Not to mention, some of them had availability limitations due to their jobs (e.g., teachers and shop-owners). In the end, we decided that the 22nd of February was the D-date, which coincided with the Carnaval holidays in the Netherlands and Fasching holidays in Germany. Perfect!!
The next step was to tell our parents about the concept of our wedding, which was not a template wedding in Indonesia. We told them that we wanted something that focused more on quality rather than quantity. We wanted our wedding to be intimate with close friends and families only (in the end we had 164 guests coming), but long enough for us to enjoy it (our wedding started at 2 pm and finished at 10 pm – plus an after-party until 4 am the next day ;)). They were quite okay in the beginning. Also, because we funded our wedding 100% by ourselves, they did not feel burdened. Although, in the end, my parents decided to have another wedding a week after because they felt obliged to invite more people. We thought that was a good deal. Deal!
We selected vendors right after. It was quite a lot of work because we had so many things to think about, to name a few: catering, decorations, wedding organizers, photo/videography, dress/suit, music. Most of the items had no clear market price. So, we weren’t sure if the quotations reflected the real price or overpriced. Along the way during preparation, we tried to do the due-diligence as best as we could, to get the best bang for the buck.
We had to deal with plan changes as well. In the beginning, we decided to register our wedding in Indonesia. However, we changed our mind two months before the wedding. We finally decided to do the religious wedding in Indonesia and the civil wedding in the Netherlands, which we thought was the right call because we could avoid wasting time with Indonesian bureaucracy and verbosity. Registering our marriage in the Netherlands turned out to be easier than we thought before because I have lived more than five years here, so I could skip all the administration-hassle and do everything online. We just had to register as quickly as possible because it was quite challenging to get the date, especially in the summer. I was happy that my dad supported this idea and helped us with everything we needed.
The last thing was preparing the prenup agreement. We thought it was enough to just make one prenup in the Netherlands because we are going to register our wedding here, but turned out that it was not enough. According to the agrarian regulations in Indonesia, foreign nationals cannot own land in Indonesia. Thus, Indonesian citizens who have mixed marriages with foreign nationals cannot have ownership rights on the land because the land can become part of joint marital property. Due to a different jurisdiction, our prenup in the Netherlands cannot cover this, so we had to make another one in Indonesia using Indonesian law. It wasn’t straightforward, but we are happy that we did it in time ten days before the wedding.
To be on top of things, we arrived in Indonesia 10 days before the wedding. Because, we still had a lot to do, such as prenup, food tasting, (which was very helpful for us and at the end we decided to change some of the dishes to fit with the whole concepts), technical meeting with all vendors, and trying some attires for another wedding a week after.
One big piece was also arranging a family bonding event for our families before the event because they haven’t met each other face to face :D. We arranged a bingo game for them so that they could start talking to each other. It was a super funny moment. For sure, a moment to remember!
Preparing the wedding with all the things that come with it was a rewarding journey for both of us. As a couple, we learned not only to manage the project (and budget! :)) well but also the stakeholders! (sorry for the corporate buzzwords – we can’t help it).
Most importantly, we also learned about each other along the way. It was so cool to see some traits from each other we did not see before, discuss things we never thought we would consider for two hours straight, and be flexible about maaanny things. For me, I was grateful to have him on board because he was very involved in the wedding from A to Z, and he always goes the extra mile (sometimes more than I do). I remember he went to an Indonesian shopping mall by himself four days before the wedding to buy prayer accouterment for the dowry. He even picked the type of flowers (and colors) for the decorations three days before the wedding.
All in all, our wedding was a real test to our resilience and collaboration…and our love!
Despite the complexity, we both agreed that we enjoyed the process. Especially the part when it came to fruition: a lovely wedding we will not forget for eternity!
Until the next project!
Cheers,
X
Short Respite 