An Invitation to a Wedding -- Bontoc-style
For the very first time, Habi Collective Media was tasked to design a wedding invitation. Details in the layout are actually clues about the culture of Igorot weddings.
Now it can be told: Bontok couple Jovy Kimakim and Aaron Acoking are getting married in a few days! Habi Collective Media will not only cover the wedding through photography and videography; we also created the couple's wedding invitations: a must in today's wedding standards.
Comic vectors, calligraphy fonts, and a movie poster for our couple -- all, a reflection of their pop-youngster quirks and interests. They started as juvenile friends during high school, and so they wore their high school uniform when we shot them at the Habi Studio in Bontoc for this layout.
But, even as we have incorporated modern details to this postcard, the invitation to an Igorot wedding is quite different in many ways.
For one: notice that this one requires no RSVP. In its place is a bold invitation: "Umali kayo am-in!" which loosely translates to "ALL OF YOU ARE INVITED!" and they really mean ALL; Jovy has since uploaded this invite on her Facebook page, set as a Public post. Cosmopolitan wedding planners would drop their jaws at this declaration, but in truth, feeding a colossal entourage -- or in Tagalog jokes, "buong baranggay" -- is a common feat in the Cordilleras.
This is an offshoot from old tradition. In those days, invitations were never really needed, as it is assumed that a wedding party is ready to feed literally the entire village, plus tens of others who will be coming from other places far and wide, depending on the farthest degree of intermarriage and kinship.
So, how do you feed all these people? Then, as it is now, several pigs -- and in kachangyan weddings, carabaos -- are butchered, and guests are given rations of sliced boiled meat with nothing but salt for flavor. Steaming heaps of rice go unlimited because, more often than not, loaded kimatas of palay are given as gifts to the newly-weds.
These days, an Igorot wedding may choose to serve fusion cuisine they learned from Philippine lowlands, like adobo, afritada, dinakdakan, and the ubiquitous pancit. Nonetheless, guests do not really expect an ostentatious food spread with French-sounding dishes, as they wish for the newly-weds to use their resources instead for starting home life comfortably.
Still, this is not to say that Igorot weddings are inexpensive parties. On the contrary: expenses do shoot up to hundreds of thousands in pesos. How on earth do they manage to mount such huge gatherings? Here enters the very Filipino tendency for bayanihan -- in contemporary Ifontok parlance, og-ogfu -- banding together to help each other reciprocally. In their weddings, of course, this would entail family members, friends, and village-mates who would offer their hands for absolutely no fee, be it to bring down wood from the forests, cut up a large pile of vegetables, cook vats upon vats of meat, or serve hundreds of people day in and day out.
The help does not end there. By the end of the wedding, all guests will have given the couple a gift that would make them start married life on the right foot -- be it some good money in an envelope, or a couple of piglets to start their own pen.
The down-to-earth formula for the party venue itself also makes inviting everyone possible. Even in the age of Pinterest, venue styling in Igorot weddings is kept to the minimum. Often, it's just letters cut out from foil, tacked to a pinagpagan fabric, announcing the names of the couple and the date of the wedding. Sometimes, crepe paper ribbons would complete the look. With the advent of large-format printing, a tarpaulin takes the place of the pinagpagan, and nothing much else.
They do not care much for table centerpieces nor for tealights in mason jars. All that is important are three must-haves: 1.) logs and monoblocs for the guests to sit on while eating, 2.) a wide open space for the dancing of the sagni and bug-bugi, and the playing of the gongs, and 3.) a huge tent that can accommodate at least fifty people under it at any given time, so that the party goes on come rain or shine.
This third one explains the next curious image in the invitation:
That, ladies and gents, is a multi-colored parachute tent pitched on top of a rip-rapped terrace, which may be a former rice terrace, or something built especially for the occasion. This tent is a very common feature in Cordilleran weddings. Sometimes, though, only a basic nylon canvas tent is used. Seeing the tent canopy from afar already signals a wedding being held in the area, hence, there is no need to put the exact address of the "bride's residence" in the invitation. You would only have to ask around, and locals will tell you to just look for the tent canopy, or -- if the dancing is already going on in earnest -- to follow the sound of the gongs :D
(To book the services of Habi Collective Media for your wedding, do send us an e-mail at habi.collective@gmail.com, or send us a private message at the Habi Collective Media Facebook page. Iyaman!)
