i've known swasti since my scgs days. so that brings it to a total of 10 years in school together before we moved off on our separate ways before finding each other again in LA and since then pretty much going to stay in each other lives for a very very long time. the way i remember it was that we were friends in school by default that she was a full on indo while my mom is... so our mothers would converse and leave us alone to be friends. but she seems to remember more details of it. the swas i remember had those huge mad scientist hair and she was such a nerd with fantastic artistic sense. her art works were always displayed on our art board and printed in the school yearbook. so much has changed and now she's a beautiful, crazy, full of life person, i've grown to become best friends with
and im really proud/excited/estatic to say that she's met someone she can spend the rest of her life with and their wedding will be this week!
these are some of the pre-wed pictures she took in france by axioo
both swas and andrew come from really traditional families and over the last weekend i was very very fortunate to be able to fly to jakarta and participate in their dowry exchange which took place in the hyatt suite and in andrew's house. i was 1 of the 8 girls helping "represent" swas with her dowry to her in-laws
preparations were crazy with every having to be pasted with double fortunte stickers and clothes, shoes, bags, makeup all wrapped with red bows.....
towels folded in a shape of a rabbit... she's really proud of this...
it was just such an elaborate ceremony, i'm so glad i made an effort to go coz i dont think i'll ever participate in something like this anymore. it was great to see the amt of work and attention to details it had to be put into. and since everything needed to be near perfect, maids were not brought in to help - so it was between swas, her mom, her aunt and myself to get everything ready and looking great.
so on 10th oct, the 8 single girls gathered in the suite alongside 7 red new luggages filled with "1 years worth of goodies" along with numerous other trays of goodies including a piss pot with a huge ginger and aloevera plant stuffed into it. some other items to exchange included 2 pairs of chicken which must lay eggs and packets and packets of garlic peanuts, beans,, rock sugar, sliced melons etc. if anyone ever needs help with the details, aunty belinda is the person to go to now :) i swear that the stuff that went into the dowry was made up by match-makers of the past coz they liked to eat the items hahaa
so the process was 8 aunties of andrew came to visit the suite bearing gifts which took a few lifts worth of trips and more goodies, ate there, took photo and with the 8 single girls, we life in an entourage of alphate to andrews house. there, we would eat again and bring the bags into their new room and more photos would be taken
as it was only a weekend trip and i was really busy dealing with the stuff, i only pretty much got to see hyatt, grand indonesia (the mall that was connected to hyatt) and andrew's house. but as i havent been back to jkt for a very very long time, and i have friends who've moved back, sat dinner was a chance for all of us to catch up and it was great!
with swas moving back to indo... looks like i might be making jkt one of my stops more often :)
this week is going to be madness with the last few days counting down and all our friends are flying in... it'll be so exhausting but great fun installed! i'm really looking forward to sat, to see how everything will come together then
