Dayak Ngaju Engagement Ceremony and Power Outage

Maybe many people have precious moment in this month such as marriage, birth, birthday party, engagement or graduation. Maybe it because this month have some beautiful day like 11-11-11 or 20-11-2011 or maybe finally rainy season come in here. I have as far as I know or I was invited six marriage invitation and one engagement invitation this month (not really good for my pocket but I sincerely happy for them). I want to tell you about the engagement of the daughter of my boarding house owner because I think that engagement ceremony was really interesting.

My boarding house owner (called him Papa Retno) is Dayak Ngaju tribe and the fiancee family too. Because their religion is Christian so the engagement ceremony was held together with thanksgiving service. If I'm not wrong, they called the main part of the engagement 'Memanggul'. Memanggul is the part of engagement ceremony when the representative of both family read 'Manggul Letter', letter that containing agreement of both families.
Generally the agreement is about when they want to hold the wedding, the things that must be prepared by the groom at the traditional ceremony when they married. Because a lot of custom stuff like jade bangle and mint gold are difficult to find at this time so they normally change it into Rupiah. The important stuff that must prepared by the man is land, Dayak man must have land to get married (see ladies?). Besides that, the agreement is also consisted of fines to be paid by any parties that canceled the agreement. I heard from reliable source that fines  nominal often high, for example the fines for my friend cousin engagement is IDR 30 million (I can go to Holly Land with that amount of money ^_^). Maybe the purpose of that fines is to assure of the agreement is fulfilled ( I knew someone who should paid high because she canceled the agreement, *fiuhhh*).

Power Outage Engagement Ceremony

Anyway, back to Papa Retno's daughter engagement ceremony. Luckily, their agreement fines is just 5 million (So, maybe I will attend their wedding next March for real). After 'Manggul Letter' reading finished, both representatives (more than five person at that time) put their signature on the seal. FYI, the engagement ceremony used dayak ngaju language (Honestly, that made me confuse). The unforgettable moment at that time was they should exchanged the ring lit only by candle light because of regular power outage in Palangka Raya. Hope you enjoy read it!