Before an important ceremony in Bali, a tetaring goes up in the home or temple compound: a temporary roof of bamboo and woven palm fronds, under which the community gathers in the shade to prepare the offerings the ritual will need. At Kayumanis Nusa Dua Private Villa and Spa the word belongs to the restaurant that supplies a wedding’s cocktails and canapés, a building of clay, glass and bamboo that the architect Budi Pradono based on that temporary structure. Weddings here are small. Each package is written for 20 people, the couple included, inside an enclave better known for some of the largest hotels in Bali.
Walled villas in an enclave of large hotels
Nusa Dua was built in the 1970s as a resort area in the south of Bali. The Bali Tourism Development Corporation, forerunner of today’s Indonesia Tourism Development Corporation, opened its first hotel there in 1983. The enclave now covers 350 hectares and more than 20 resorts behind security checkpoints, and eight of the island’s ten largest hotels stand inside it. The name means two islands, after the pair in its bay: Peninsula Island to the south and the smaller Nusa Dharma to the north, which holds a temple.
Kayumanis works on a different scale. The name is the Indonesian for cinnamon, literally sweet wood, and it belongs to an Indonesian group with villa retreats at Sanur, Ubud, Jimbaran and Nusa Dua and two more in mainland China, at Nanjing and Yangshuo. In Nusa Dua the resort is a compound of pavilions, each villa set in its own walled garden with a private pool, and every villa has a personal butler on duty around the clock. A long white sand beach runs along the enclave a short walk from the gardens, and Kayumanis has a private stretch of it with a beach club.
A restaurant built on the idea of a ceremony roof
Budi Pradono’s design for Tetaring, which won Cycle 4 of the World Architecture Community’s WA Awards, divides the restaurant into three parts. Its tall clay buildings reinterpret the low technology architecture of the Bali Aga, the island’s indigenous people, whose villages lie in the eastern mountains. Glass walls stand beside moveable partitions of split bamboo that slide as sun screens, opening a space up or closing it in, and a ramp leads to the main reception, with a foyer on the upper floor for dining indoors or out. The kitchen cooks Indonesian food, from a Balinese chicken salad in lemongrass sauce to oxtail soup, and the restaurant is open all day for meals, afternoon tea and cocktails.
Every Thursday guests make canang and ketupat at Tetaring, the Balinese offerings made from coconut leaves and flowers. The resort’s second restaurant, Piasan, is an Italian dining room in the same pairing of glass and bamboo, with a menu built on fresh produce and seasonal ingredients.
Four settings for a Balinese blessing
Ceremonies at Kayumanis are blessings, in Balinese or Western style, held in one of four settings in the grounds. Among them are the Kayumanis Lounge, the Green Patio, a lawn shaded by tall trees, and the private beach, which is an upgrade at USD 350 plus tax and service. A priest or celebrant leads the ceremony and the certificate is issued by Kayumanis; the legal side of marrying in Indonesia is a separate process, set out in our guide to marrying in Bali.
A Balinese umbrella marks the entrance to the ceremony, petals line the walkway, and four umbrella boys or four flower girls, or a mix of the two, escort the couple to the altar. Musicians play the rindik, a traditional Balinese instrument, and the package includes the release of two doves, a personalised cake and two glasses of sparkling wine for the toast. The Intimate Wedding includes a frangipani bouquet for the bride and a frangipani boutonnière for the groom, and a preparation room is set aside for wedding make up.
Cocktails by the pool, dinner in the gardens
After the ceremony the reception moves to the pool. Tetaring’s kitchen sends out finger food and its signature cocktails, candles and flowers are set along the pool’s edge, and a rindik musician plays through the drinks. Dinner can be laid by the pool, in the gardens, on the sand or in Piasan, each setting dressed with its own floral theme. Menus come from the executive chef with Asian, Western or Italian influences, either as a set wedding menu or as a barbecue buffet, and red and white wines are poured through the evening.
All three wedding packages are written for a maximum of 20 people including the couple, and guests beyond that are added at a charge per person: USD 8 plus tax and service on the first package, drinks excluded, and USD 12 on the other two, with a welcome drink included. Prices start at IDR 28,000,000 for the Intimate Wedding, plus 21 per cent tax and service. The most complete, the Kayumanis Wedding at IDR 61,000,000, adds three musicians and a sound system to the ceremony and folds the honeymoon into the price: two nights in a one bedroom private pool villa, honeymoon flowers on the wedding day, a candlelit dinner for two in the villa and a two hour wedding spa treatment for the couple.
Pavilions, pools and a butler for every villa
Every villa is a private compound. The one bedroom private pool villas cover 300 square metres, with one bedroom and a separate living pavilion, a private pool in its garden, indoor and open air living and dining space with a fully equipped kitchen, and an outdoor bathroom with a tub and a standing shower. The one bedroom suite, kept as the honeymoon suite, takes 600 square metres for two people, with a circular bed in a white sleeping pavilion, an en suite Jacuzzi and local artwork through the rooms.
For families and the wedding party there are two and three bedroom villas. The two bedroom residence sits in a walled Balinese garden of native palms and frangipani trees with its own pool and sun deck, across 500 square metres. The three bedroom villa, at 700 square metres, has thatched roofs, native hardwoods, an integrated living and dining room with a kitchen, a generously sized pool and several bathrooms. The butler is also the person who arranges the rest of a stay, from the resort car to a cooking lesson.
The days around the wedding
Each morning one couple is given a sunrise breakfast on the private beach at six o’clock, and the beach club, with its permanent sun loungers, takes picnic lunches brought down by a butler. The weekly programme runs from a Balinese dance class at the main pool on Mondays and sambal making at Tetaring on Tuesdays to yoga in the courtyard on Wednesdays and Balinese cake making with the pastry chef on Fridays, and guests can dress in a sarong or kebaya on any day. A chef will also take guests to a local market to buy ingredients and then teach a lesson in Balinese cooking in the villa’s own kitchen.
Kayumanis Spa bases its treatments on Indonesian healing traditions, among them Balinese massage and herb infused body scrubs, given at the spa or in the villa. Its signature Ocean Ritual begins with a foot scrub of white sand and ends in a rose petal bath. Beyond the enclave the resort arranges visits to Luhur Uluwatu, one of the island’s six Sad Kahyangan temples, which stands on a cliff about 70 metres above the sea at the south western tip of the Bukit Peninsula; a Kecak dance is performed on the cliffside there every evening at six.
Reaching Nusa Dua
Ngurah Rai International Airport is about 20 minutes away by car, and Denpasar is about 22 kilometres from Nusa Dua. The resort’s villa stays include a return airport transfer, and inside the enclave a private car and driver are available free of charge from 8 am to 5 pm with half an hour’s notice to the butler. For the wider area see weddings in Nusa Dua and the Indonesia Wedding Atlas, and for the hills inland our Edit on Alila Ubud.
Twenty places, or a wider guest list
The appeal of Kayumanis is privacy at a small scale: a walled pool villa for each party, Balinese ritual in the ceremony and, with the fullest package, the first nights of the honeymoon without moving on. The decision to settle first is the guest list. The packages are designed around 20 people, so a couple with a longer list will be paying per head beyond the package and should agree with the wedding team how the ceremony setting and dinner will work at that size. Settle the number, read the Kayumanis Nusa Dua profile, and check your date.
