When a couple decides to marry, immediately the headache of the wedding details takes center stage. What date? What type of cake? Who will the guests be? Can the bride find the perfect wedding dress?
Imagine if, on top of those little details, the bride and groom have to consider big ones, like language and religion.
A production team from the brand new reality television program “Quiero Mi Boda” (“I want my wedding”) from the bicultural, bilingual Hispanic MTV3 network, sought to follow couples from different cultures in their inaugural season, to find out what happens when they start to plan their wedding and the reality of their culture difference becomes a key component, or obstacle, as they move closer to the big day.
MTV3 came to the right place.
In Queens, MTV3 found Indri Sadikins, 27, and Victor Alfonso Romero, 25, after the couple booked Astoria World Manor for their wedding. Sadikins, an Indonesian Muslim, and Romero, a Mexican Catholic, met almost six years ago. Back then, he didn’t speak English and she didn’t speak any Spanish.
But love can conquer all, as this couple proves.
According to Sadikins, they met at work. She started to work as a cashier in the same fast food restaurant where Romero worked as a delivery boy. He was out sick with an injury when she started.
However, “when I saw her, it was love at first sight,” he said. “I told her she was very pretty.”
A couple of days later, Romero offered to take her home and, according to Romero, she must have liked him because she sneaked a kiss.
“I didn’t tell him that I had a boyfriend until about four months later,” she told The Queens Courier over the phone from Walt Disney World, where the couple went for their honeymoon. “I didn’t think things were going to get serious.”
But after two weeks, Romero risked it all.
“At that time, I didn’t speak English so I had a friend write in a paper for me ‘Do you want to be my girlfriend,’ and I practiced it over and over again. But when I saw her then I became mute,” he said. He admitted that she snatched the piece of paper from his hand and read it. They started to date.
Sadikins and Romero had a municipal wedding in December 2009 and then a reception on January 9, 2010. But Sadikins did manage a small win – she got Romero to dress in the traditional Indonesian male wedding outfits.
With the help of MTV3, Sadikins gave Romero a gift to last a lifetime. An MTV3 crew obtained video footage of Romero’s parents in Mexico congratulating him – in Spanish – on his wedding since they could not attend. Romero had not seen them in years.
“Victor cried like a baby,” Sadikins said. “I had never seen him like this.”
In spite of his tearful reality television moment, Romero said that Sadikins was his ideal mate.
“She has sat with me and taught me English,” he said, adding that she has also taught him some Indonesian and that she has learned some Spanish, which she practices when she speaks to his parents over the phone. “She’s a great partner and we spend all our time laughing.”
“I think that the most important thing is for people to breakdown these barriers,” he said.
The episode of “Quiero Mi Boda” featuring Sadikins and Romero’s wedding is tentatively scheduled for Monday, March 15 at 9 p.m. on MTV3. The inaugural season premiered on January 18 and can be watched every Monday at 9 p.m.
