My 1st Malay Wedding
Thanks to Shahrin, finally his Malay heritage has come to some use in our years of friendship :P.I attended my first Malay Wedding with him on Sat. Funny isnt it, that I have never attended someone's wedding from another race in Singapore in my 25 years of life. Maybe its because I dont have many friends of other races in Singapore. Sad case eh.
Anyways I was rather surprised to learn the interesting facts of Malay wedding in comparision with the Chinese ones. Apparently:
- A normal Malay wedding takes place from 12noon to 8pm at night, and usually its a 2 day affair.One day for probably the groom's side of relatives and friends, and another day for the bride's side.This long time range is so that pple can just drop by and leave after their "makan" ( eat in malay) and taking photos with the bride and groom on this decorated platform called the raised dais. So you go,take photo, talk to the happy couple and their mum and dad, take the buffet meal or sometimes the attendents serve u when u are seated. And in some stricter cases, apparently the males are seated in one side of the room and the females at another side of the room.
- There are also supposedly many costume changes for the couple, well we went around the last few hours, so we didnt see them
- And a wedding would normally see 2000-3000!!!! pple attending!My swedish friends have often dropped their jaws when they heard that a Chinese wedding has around 300-500 pple whereas in Sweden, small wedding dinner of only close relatives and friends of around 50 or less is the normal trend. Have heard of attendees in thousands for Indian weddings which go on for days and nights, never knew the same apply for Malay weddings as well.
- Interestingly enough, Shahrin said that due to the influence of Hinduism before Islam in Singapore, there are many "borrowed" customs from the Indian wedding such as the dais and the henna application of the bride's hands.Otherwise a Malay Muslim wedding is really a simple affair of signing of contract and solemnization.
Pretty casual and "lots of freedom and conveinence" I would say compared to the Chinese 10 course wedding dinner where the dinner starts around 8pm till 11pm and of course you have to stay seated till the whole thing ends with
the occasional alcohol drinking rounds with the couple "yam seng" screams. But I can also imagine how "shack" or exhausting this wedding couple is to get those pearly white smiles up for half the day. And I guess unless you are really really rich, you cant afford to book an expensive venue like hotel ballroom for half a day, otherwise having the celebration at community centres and the HDB void decks would suffice nicely.
Have also done a search and found more information here if you are interested to learn more about Malay weddings in Singapore.
Anyways I was rather surprised to learn the interesting facts of Malay wedding in comparision with the Chinese ones. Apparently:
- A normal Malay wedding takes place from 12noon to 8pm at night, and usually its a 2 day affair.One day for probably the groom's side of relatives and friends, and another day for the bride's side.This long time range is so that pple can just drop by and leave after their "makan" ( eat in malay) and taking photos with the bride and groom on this decorated platform called the raised dais. So you go,take photo, talk to the happy couple and their mum and dad, take the buffet meal or sometimes the attendents serve u when u are seated. And in some stricter cases, apparently the males are seated in one side of the room and the females at another side of the room.
- There are also supposedly many costume changes for the couple, well we went around the last few hours, so we didnt see them
- And a wedding would normally see 2000-3000!!!! pple attending!My swedish friends have often dropped their jaws when they heard that a Chinese wedding has around 300-500 pple whereas in Sweden, small wedding dinner of only close relatives and friends of around 50 or less is the normal trend. Have heard of attendees in thousands for Indian weddings which go on for days and nights, never knew the same apply for Malay weddings as well.
- Interestingly enough, Shahrin said that due to the influence of Hinduism before Islam in Singapore, there are many "borrowed" customs from the Indian wedding such as the dais and the henna application of the bride's hands.Otherwise a Malay Muslim wedding is really a simple affair of signing of contract and solemnization.
Pretty casual and "lots of freedom and conveinence" I would say compared to the Chinese 10 course wedding dinner where the dinner starts around 8pm till 11pm and of course you have to stay seated till the whole thing ends with
the occasional alcohol drinking rounds with the couple "yam seng" screams. But I can also imagine how "shack" or exhausting this wedding couple is to get those pearly white smiles up for half the day. And I guess unless you are really really rich, you cant afford to book an expensive venue like hotel ballroom for half a day, otherwise having the celebration at community centres and the HDB void decks would suffice nicely.
Have also done a search and found more information here if you are interested to learn more about Malay weddings in Singapore.
3 Comments:
what about chinese weddings? I went to Taiwanese wedding of my friend, and it is nothing much but eating a lot :D
By Aibek D., At 4:49 PM
yeah the chinese wedding itself is mainly a feast and very noisy where relatives you havent seen in a while use this opportunity to get together and yak yak yak ...the more traditional customs i think take place in the morning where the groom has to come and pick up the bride and hence alot of "fun" stuff happens where the "sisters" bridemaids will haggle with the best man on the price of letting them into the apartment and playing tricks on the groom :)
By Ying, At 10:57 AM
Just wondered: Why do call it "from another race in Singapore"....? Why not origin, or nationality? Do you believe that every country is its own race? Would be interesting to know...see, the word race just sounds so Nazi-like to me. But I've heard several people from Singapore use that expression before...
By Carissa )i(, At 1:29 AM
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