My "Hantaran"

Weather in KL is so hot these couple of weeks. Can you imagine our a/c at home feels like a normal fan? It made me feel uncomfortable and grumpy. But I couldn’t complain much, as I always remind myself, hell are much much hotter than this! Helluva reminder huh…?!!

Anyhooz…despite of feeling like been baked in an oven for 2 weeks, I am actually quite excited. My “prospective mother in law” had called my mother to fix the date for “merisik”. Merisik is actually a Malay word, which I can’t find the English word, where by the boy family will come to the girl’s house to have a meeting to discuss about their 2 children’s engagement day. On this day, the 2 families will get to know each other better and will give a final decision of the date, the “hantaran” (the gifts), the theme color, the venue and etc. Yes, we do give sorts of gifts to each other besides the ring for the girl. Nice huh..?

In Malay culture, the “hantaran” have to be given by odd number, and the boy gets to give lesser than the girl. For example, Ash and I are planning to choose 7 vs 9. So Ash will give me 7 trays and I will reward him 9 trays. This “ritual” will be repeated on the wedding day too. But the numbers must be higher than the engagement day numbers.

The gifts are mostly foodstuff, like fruit, chocolate, cupcake, cookies, shoe and bag, or a blouse, sunglasses and perfume but the most important and must have things are include, decorative betel leaves, Quran, and our malay traditional costume. It will be placed on a tray for each gift and will be decorated according to the color theme that has been agreed by the families.

So… I haven’t decide the gifts for Ash. I will stick with the traditional stuff, not going to be too “grand”, just will keep as simple as I possibly could. These items are in my mind,

The beige fabric is for our "akad nikah" costume. I will explain that when the day comes.

Yaaah.. that's about it. I hope everything will go as planned. Its only a matter of time.