Saturday, April 15, 2006

Kidnap me, please…!!!

There’s hundreds of marriage custom in Indonesia, since this country consisted of hundreds ethnic groups. This one is from Lampung province in Sumatra:

There is a native Lampung guy who wants to married to javaneese girl. A week before ‘big day’, the bride is suddenly disappearing, and her family starts to panic! Then her parent talk to guy parent about this. But hey, what happen with this Lampung family? They are absolutely not worried at all.

The Lampung family finally knows that the Java family do not know about local Lampung pre marriage custom, and start to explain what exactly happen to their daughter.

“Don’t worry about your daughter, she’s save and in good conditions. She was kidnapped by my son”, the Lampung family says.

So, the Java family finally know that according to Lampung custom, there is a special ritual called ‘larian’ - that’s mean kidnapping- a few days before the big day. In the past, man will kidnap their girlfriend if her parents disagree with their relationship.

Commonly, the new couple will stay at their parent home after marriage. So, in this time, this ‘larian’ ritual still continued as ‘orientation session’ for girl, in order to get used to her boyfriend family atmosphere.

I think if you live in US, you also can kidnap your girl friend, but maybe it will ends up with you going to jail : ).

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