Jerome (my younger brother) is Getting Married

After all the traditional asking of the hands and talks about the upcoming wedding, decision is now made. Jerome and her fiancee Brenda is getting married on January 10, 2009.

Common Marriage Traditions/Practices
When two people decides to get married, it is imperative that the guy will ask the parents of the girl for her hands. He will formally tell the girl's parents on his intention on getting married with their daughter. After the asking of the hand, the guy's family will then go to the girl's family and talk about the wedding, the date, the place, the reception, and most especially the expenses. Usually, the guy's family will shoulder all the expenses of the wedding. But in recent years, some families shares the expenses or the girls family will have shares on certain expenses.

Wedding in the Philippines, especially in a rural areas like ours is really a grand celebration. This is usually a two day feast, the day before the wedding and the wedding day. Food and wine are served endlessly. People do come and go. Family, friends and neighbors will help prepare the area for reception, the church decorations, flower arrangements for the wedding entourage and everything that needs to be done before the BIG DAY and in return you have to feed them. There are also a lot of people that will help you on preparing the meal (i.e slaughtering, cleaning, cutting and cooking). This happens both in the house of the bride and groom to be. So basically, there is two feasts going on. The reason being is that after the wedding the general reception will be at the bride's residence but after the reception the bride will leave her family and stay in the groom's family. When the groom comes home, some of the bride's family and relatives will accompany her to the grooms residence and somehow see to it that the bride is accepted by the groom's family. And of course, there should be food to be partaken. After this, the bride's family will go home and the bride will stay with the groom.

End of the big feast. Start of headache for the groom's family on how to pay all those expenses.

(Jerome and Brenda) Wedding Plans
With the economic crisis today, both families decided that the wedding will be held in the city. Reception will be in the restaurant. With this scenario, visitors are limited. Less expenses for the wedding.

In lieu of the wedding reception, Brenda's family will host a thanksgiving party where all her relatives, friends and neighbors can participate in the feast. Our family will give them 150kgs of live pig, several cases of softdrinks and sack of rice. Jerome will also do the same. They will also have a thanksgiving party in our house.

With the thanksgiving party, it is a practical idea because you will only have one meal to serve the guests unlike the 2 day wedding reception where you will be serving breakfast, lunch and dinner to the guests for 2 days.

My Thoughts
I am in favor of their decision. It is practical. I don't want them to borrow money just to have a grand wedding celebration (which is always the case in Filipino Weddings). Our whole family also agree that it is not good to start a new life with debts/loans.

When my older brother and sister got married, I was busy with the wedding preparations. Mottiff, Entourage, Invitations, Flowers, Receptions and everything! This I think is the one I will miss the most!