Connecting, uniting

You wake up to the sound of the world breathing (or screaming) in all corners, among others in rallies and killings in some Middle East countries, then in a sense of war on issues hard to accept, like the question of who owns the islands, or which, on the South China Sea. The world is connecting, disconnecting, and is time running out?

Why don’t we unite, like in a marriage, instead of divide?

There is a rise in intermarriage which, in a Pew census, 43 percent of Americans see as good for them and positive for the world as a whole.

But here in the Philippines, they talk about the cost of weddings.

That was in my mind when I realized that today is the second “ber” month of the year. It’s not June, it’s not the wedding month. But in the past few days, I’ve heard talk about an October wedding set by the family of relatives of an officemate and two others.

“Pero, wa’y langas sila, ambut uy! duna ba kaha’y party.”

“Mahal man ang wedding karon.”

The couple can’t afford a “wedding planner” and both don’t know enough of the affair for them to handle organizing everything. There’s just enough money (but never enough time without stress?) to arrange the reception. This is even to mention only one concern over expenses in the matter of getting married in our day and time.

Is there going to be a wedding reception, say for 100 people? How about if there were only the judge or priest, and two witnesses, an uncle and an aunt as sponsors, and no party?

How much does it cost to have a wedding ceremony and party?

It’s not June, it’s not a wedding month these days. It’s October, there’s no wedding fare. But that’s probably why some practical incoming couples try and get married in a hush any time of the year except in June and in December.

October is close to December, when there’s extra money in bonuses, so a wedding could be held with a planner to handle the pressure. A loan could be useful. Anyway, the groom could pay it back when the Christmas bonus comes along. And there are the two of them working ….

Our co-employee said her cousin has asked relatives to stop talking about the wedding, as if to say, “please expect nothing much of a party, we can’t afford a wedding party in the city.”

Imagine the things to do for a wedding, according to wedding planners—choosing the best ring in town, designing the sleek stationery invitation, attracting the best of the wedding bands in town to play unforgettable music, designing the wedding dress and more dresses for the female sponsors, also the sleek suits with boutonniéres in a show of class for the male sponsors. This, not to talk of the bridal bouquets and flowers at the altar and along the aisle for the processional walk. Then the most able photographer and, of course, the food. Not to talk of the cost of honeymoon.

This is what planners would talk about when they learn that you are getting hitched and still at the pre-planning stage. Now, they don’t have to talk you in, you look to hire them. The Philippines has now enough wedding planning done by experts in the field, says a wedding planner advertisement.

In the pre-Spanish period, there was the babaylan, like there is the priest today in the country’s Christian faith. There were no churches but the house of the same tribal priest or priestess as venue for the wedding. The main personalities also dressed up, I suppose, along the style of the pre-colonial time. It took three days to undertake the wedding, including the pricking of the bride and the groom’s chests for a bit of the blood mixed in drinking water for the couple to drink on the third day in some kind of an oath to be one.

In a wedding in this Christian nation, there is the promise to each other of a “life-long commitment.” As then and now, a wedding is a union not only of two persons but of two and more families, or the entire clans of the bride and the groom, or of the world in the home of races connecting, not dividing in wars. . .

And a wedding doesn’t have to be something only planners can organize.

(ecuizon@gmail.com)