HAPPY OR SAD, solemn or raucous, secular or religious.
Funeral in Rantepao, on Indonesia's Sulawesi island.
Funerals are of course solemn affairs, but also a hugely important cultural gathering.
Family return from all across Indonesia and abroad. Hundreds of mourners is not unusual.
Feeding all these mourners is a massive task, with dozens of staff cooking scores of pigs and at least one buffalo.
Funerals take place in the person's village, in the central "rante" gathering place.
The Toraja people do not bury their dead.
Cliff-faces are a common burial place, with chambers carved out of the rocks.
Caves are also used, with ornate, decorated coffins left exposed to the elements, protected by "tau-tau" effigies.
Tau-tau need to be looked after too, with a pack of smokes and some flash money.
Still on Sulawesi, the old girls get set to party at a rural wedding.
The bride is introduced to her new family and blessed by the local imam, on the penultimate day of the celebrations.
Musicians perform through the night, and as is common at Muslim weddings, it's the old ducks who really rock the dance floor.
The bride and her bridesmaids.
Bride and groom have their wedding sanctified by a Hindu priest at the Kapaleeshwarar temple, Chennai, India.