Ifugao-Kalanguya Wedding! :D

So I promised I’d blog about the wedding I was able to attend in Mapayao, Kayapa, Nueva Vizcaya last May 1. I’ll try to include some pictures too.

What’s so different about it?

It was an inter-tribal wedding. The groom was an Ifugao, and the bride, Kalanguya. They couldn’t understand each other with their 1st languages since the groom couldn’t speak Kalanguya and the bride vice-versa. They spoke to each other in Ilocano and Tagalog though. They got married in Mapayao, on the top of the mountain, just like the other residents there.

Ifugao-Kalanguya Wedding in Mapayao

The view from where the wedding was held was so beautiful! The picture in my previous entry about my fieldwork, the one where you could see the rice terraces was taken from the wedding.

Anyway, before I go into detail about the actual wedding, the wedding preparations were something too! The day before the wedding, everyone in the community could be found there at the venue helping out! From cooking the food for the guests, setting up the pallapala or the tent, putting up the decorations, etc! It was a barangay event. The concept of BAYANIHAN at its finest.

Chopping of the Pig Parts

Pansit Cooking

Stewing the Pork

(I only have pictures of the food preparations since I haven’t gotten the rest of the pictures from my groupmate. Will edit this once I get them.)

We attempted to help out but the people there didn’t want us to because they treated us like guests in the community. They did, however, teach us how to make this cute birds out of palm leaves.

So anyway, that eve of the wedding, there was also dancing and dining to celebrate the arrival of the groom’s party. It lasted until very early morning of the next day, I believe?

On the wedding itself, as we got there around 9:00am, everyone was quite busy. The Mapayao folks who prepared the food were packing them, and the entourage was being prepped up.

What’s amusing about this wedding is the fusion of Christianity and their native beliefs. In the early times before American missionaries came to their area, a wedding or timbal was like this: The soon-to-be-married couple would be seated in front of the community elders, as the elders or apo would give them advice like what a married life is like, what they should or should not do. Once this advice-giving or pagbibigay-payo is over, the couple is pronounced married. It would then be followed by the eating of watwat or pig parts and other food, and dancing of the tayaw. Some weddings would have the ba-liw wherein old women would be singing or chanting the prayers the people in the wedding would voluntarily cry out. It may be similar to a pasyon.

So anyway, this “contemporary” tribal wedding we attended was a Christian one. Like typical Christian weddings, their wedding consisted of principal sponsors or ninongs and ninangs, a pastor to preside, an entourage, the veil, cord and candle parts of the ceremony, the kissing part, etc. Even the attire of the bride was white gown, unlike before, a good dress would do like one of my informants told me.

The similarity of the contemporary to old custom was that even though there was a pastor, what he basically did was to give advice too, just like the community elders did in the older days. Also, when the wedding ceremony ended, eating of the watwat was still observed but now added with food like pansit and rice. They served the food in plastic bags, and the guests had to fall in line to claim their food. The first ones to be given were the kids, followed by the old folks, then everyone else.

Food in Plastic Bags

We didn’t get to eat ours from the plastic bag though. Since we were treated as  “special guests” being linguists/anthropologists, we were asked to dine on plates and to get our food from this special buffet, alongside the Vice-Governor of Nueva Vizcaya, a few Councilors of Kayapa, some Barangay Officials and the married couple’s families.

After most of the people have eaten, it was shortly followed by dancing the tayaw musically accompanied with the gangha/gangsa a 4-piece gong set that elders played.

Gangha

We got to dance the tayaw ourselves, since the Vice-Governor of Nueva Vizcaya requested us to do so. Some of us also got to play the gangha and the elders taught us how to play. One of the gangha-players told us this:

Hindi mo lang dapat pinipitik ‘yan (gangha). Dapat tuwing tutugtugin mo, nararamdaman mong yumuyugyog yung katawan mo. Dapat nararamdaman mong masarap.

So he told us to try to play it right, and while playing he would say “Dapat yung naririnig mo sa kalooban mo.” and after we’d play a repetitive rhythm, he’d go “Anong nararamdaman mo? Magaan ba? Parang masarap?” Yes. It was very therapeutic to play these gongs if you ask me.

Going back to the actual wedding…

So there were plenty of dancing. Dancing the tayaw is by request, and you may also request to which song a particular group would dance to. You could choose the gangha or Yoyoy Villame’s Magellan, Philippine Geography or this other song I didn’t catch as accompaniment.

Because the dancing seemed endless and it was already around 4:00pm, our group decided to head home already.

Yeyyyyy XD

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