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The three-day nuptials of the scions of two of the country’s top politicians kick off today, cementing the already close ties between President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and Hatta Rajasa, the coordinating minister for the economy.

The wedding ceremony of Edhie Baskoro Yudhoyono, the president’s youngest son, and Siti Ruby Aliya Rajasa, Hatta’s daughter, starts with a prayer and a siraman traditional shower ceremony.

“The ceremony will be held on Tuesday at Cikeas [Yudhoyono’s private residence in Bogor] and at Hatta’s home in Fatmawati [in South Jakarta],” presidential spokesman Julian Aldrin Pasha said on Monday.

After the prayer and siraman, the two families will take part in another ceremony on Tuesday evening called midodareni , where the groom’s family visits the bride’s family to formally seek her hand in marriage.

“A convoy from Cikeas will meet with the bride’s family at Fatmawati,” Julian said. “This will be the peak of Tuesday’s events and is scheduled for 7:30 p.m. until 9 p.m.”

The elaborately planned wedding ceremony, held in traditional Javanese style, will then resume on Thursday morning with the official union taking place at the Cipanas Palace in Cianjur, West Java, before around 1,000 specially invited guests.

Vice President Boediono is expected to serve as the groom’s witness during the ceremony, while Amien Rais, a co-founder of the National Mandate Party (PAN) that Hatta now chairs, will serve as Siti’s witness.

Julian said the couple would then hold a reception on Saturday at the Jakarta Convention Center in Senayan, South Jakarta, with around 3,600 guests invited. He added that Yudhoyono would not take those three days off but would fit the wedding ceremony into his existing schedule.

“We all understand that for the ordinary citizen, it’s reasonable to take a day off for a wedding in the family, but as the head of state the president can’t do this,” he said.

“As far as I know, the president will keep working as usual on those days, while [Hatta] will also be obliged to submit regular reports to him. There’s no indication that the president will take time off for the wedding.”

Julian also brushed off questions about whether it was appropriate to use the Cipanas Palace, one of a series of presidential palaces nationwide, to host the wedding of the president’s son, arguing that “there are no rules forbidding such a thing.”

The spokesman added that the stream of politicians, ambassadors and other VIPs heading from Jakarta to Cipanas, about 100 kilometers south of the capital, would not disrupt regular traffic.

“We’ve planned it so that the guests first gather at a rest stop at the 45-kilometer point of the road. From there, they will head together in a convoy escorted by police so that there will be minimal disruption to the traffic,” Julian said.

The wedding, announced in April this year, has been blasted by critics as a ploy to strengthen ties between Yudhoyono’s ruling Democratic Party and the PAN ahead of the 2014 legislative and presidential elections.

It also came just as the PAN announced it would name Hatta as its presidential candidate. With Yudhoyono blocked by term limits for running for office again, the Democrats have no prominent figurehead to endorse come 2014, leaving open the question of whether they will give their backing to Hatta. 

Antara