Lion Air crash victim’s fiancee stages solo wedding shoot

A woman whose fiance was killed in the Lion Air plane crash has posed for photo portraits in her wedding dress, saying it is what her partner would have wanted.

Intan Syari’s wedding photos, in which the smiling bride wears a white gown and headscarf and holds a bouquet of white roses, look like those of a typical Indonesian bride - but they hide a tragic secret.

Her bridegroom, Rio Nanda Pratama, was one of the 189 passengers who died when Lion Air flight JT610 crashed shortly after take-off from Jakarta on 29 October.

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Pratama, a doctor, was returning to the couple’s home city of Pangkalpinang from a medical conference in Jakarta when the plane crashed into the sea, killing all on board.

The pair met as school students and had been together for 13 years before setting 11 November as the date of their nuptials, The Jakarta Post reports.

Before leaving for the conference, Pratama had joked with Syari that if he was delayed and missed the wedding, she should dress up in her gown and send him a photograph.

Syari, who works in the finance department of the hospital where Pratama was employed as a doctor, said she decided to honour the light-hearted comment as a tribute to her fiance, The Straits Times reports.

“There is sadness that I cannot describe, but I have to smile for you,” the 26-year-old wrote in the caption of a photo from the shoot shared on Instagram. “I shall not mourn. I have to stay strong like you always told me.”

As well as the photos of Syari in her wedding dress, other images include close-up of her wedding ring and a group picture featuring one of Pratama’s sisters.

“Even though you were not next to me yesterday your loyal sister accompanied me to carry out your last most beautiful request,” she wrote, adding: “Know that our love for you will not diminish at all, we love you forever.”

The unusual wedding portraits have gone viral in Indonesia, which is reeling from its deadliest aviation disaster since 1997.

Indonesian authorities ended their recovery operation at the Java Sea crash site on Saturday. Almost 200 human remains have been found, with 77 victims’ bodies identified so far.