Writings By Date| A Perfect Balinese Wedding | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 |
After taking turns signing the church papers, the religious ceremony was done, but not the wedding. Now, we had to go through the official civil ceremony. It was basically five minutes long. The officer (or whatever he's called) said our names, posed a few simple questions making sure we planned to be monogamous and stuff. Then another kiss, and more papers to sign. They were all in Indonesian and some of it looked a little dodgy (particularly since none of the blank lines were filled in), so I mentioned to Keith that I thought we just bought another timeshare.
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| Making Sure We Got It Right |
With the ceremony finally over, it was time for more pictures. The photographer came to our room before the ceremony, so we had already taken a few pictures beforehand. We began in front of the temple, then started wandering the grounds, constantly looking for that ideal shot containing sunshine, the ocean, and/or bouganvilla. We walked around ponds, across beaches, over bridges, and on top of trees. We walked back down the aisle while Alison through flower petals from her plate of flowers (getting most of them down Keith's bulang), and strolled along the beach for some cheesy photos, and a few that were not-so-cheesy. He made us do a few dorky things, but mostly I think he did an fairly decent job. He even had us pose with Alison pinching Keith's bum with me looking to punch her and Keith and John looking surprised. It was cheesy but fun.
Finally, all the pictures were done and we headed back over to the Peninsula (our resort). We were all so hot that it only took three seconds of being in the room before we started praising whomever invented air conditioning. Each of us was soaked through in certain places, and I dearly wanted to get the headdress off my head. Thank God Ali pulled out the really high pieces, so I could at least sit upright in the car on the way back. It took Keith and me about 15 minutes just to get undressed! Finally, after showering and changing, we popped open the fancy bottle of champagne we'd purchased in the Barossa Valley (McGuigan's Black Label), and had a quick toast. (The wine was a sparkling shiraz — something we'd never heard of, but is actually quite common in Australia...and quite good!) After hauling the bottle around for over a month, it still tasted wonderful, and was definitely worth it.
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| At the Barung |
Now that we had scrubbed ourselves clean of makeup, changed, and cooled off, we headed back over to the Sheraton for dinner, where we'd booked the Bali Barung. It's a little raised platform/gazebo-like structure, with a hole cut out of the middle for a table and our feet to dangle down. When we arrived, the table was already set with flowers and a candle, and large purple, pink and gold curtains were tied back at the posts with ornate ties. The waiter asked if we had cameras, and he immediately took our pictures sitting around the table. We were welcomed with a sort of strawberry smoothie "welcome drink", after which he poured our wine (Peterson's House Chardonnay from the Hunter Valley, which we'd also been carrying around with us). With the sound of the surf and a cool breeze blowing, it was an idyllic and perfect way to end the day.
