A traditional Malay wedding features a communal feast, known as kenduri kahwin, often with buffet-style serving and symbolic dishes like nasi minyak or nasi briyani with chicken or beef curries. Typically the hosts (parents, siblings & family members) and the wedding couples dress in traditional Malay attire, whereas the guests dress in national costume (batik) give monetary gifts in envelopes, and receive a symbolic take away gifts as a token of appreciation.
The bride and groom sit at a special decorated dais on stage as the ceremony serves to formally present the couple as a married couple to a wide circle of family, colleagues, neighbors and friends. Following which they adjourn to the ‘royal’ table, symbolizing as recognition their esteemed status for the day. In a traditional Malay wedding, newlyweds are accorded the term raja sehari (king for a day) and are treated just like royalties, with martial art performance.(https://www.penangweddingtourism.gov.my)
Last Saturday, I accompanied my wife, Zarina to attend a wedding reception of her UiTM (Universiti Teknologi MARA) classmate, Mohammed Hilmi's son, Mohammad Idris Haziq with Nurfatin Nabilah Nizar at the Ruscus Hall, Forest Valley Hall, Bandar Mahkota Cheras. It is Selangor's top wedding venue, offers stunning glasshouse event space located in an urban forest surrounded by lush greenery rainforest views with ample parking lots. It creates a truly magical ambiance with outdoor garden stalls serving delicious local food, like goreng pisang, cucur udang, bubur kacang, cendol and hot drink teh tarik. (https://www.instagram.com/forestvalleyhall)
I enjoyed when Zarina get together again with her long time accounting classmates, engaged in an open-ended conversations about their current life and grandchildren and reminiscing about their shared past university and work as well as after retirement community services and development experiences. Even though they still keep in touch by chatting on Facebook or WhatsApp but is not the same as meeting in person & really grateful of this opportunity.
Zulkifly Baharom (hajizul50@gmail.com) is a content creator under the Newswav Creator programme, where you get to express yourself, be a citizen journalist, and at the same time monetize your content & reach millions of users on Newswav. Log in to creator.newswav.com and become a Newswav Creator now!
The User Content (as defined on Newswav Terms of Use) above including the views expressed and media (pictures, videos, citations etc) were submitted & posted by the author. Newswav is solely an aggregation platform that hosts the User Content. If you have any questions about the content, copyright or other issues of the work, please contact creator@newswav.com.