Learn Hardcore Indonesian: Sesudah resepsi pernikahan selesai, kami pulang bareng ke rumah. - After the wedding reception is finished, we go home together.

Many speakers feel setelah sounds a bit more neutral/standard.
Sesudah can sound slightly more colloquial or everyday in some regions, but it is still standard.

You can safely treat them as synonyms for now.

Why is it sesudah resepsi pernikahan selesai and not sesudah resepsi pernikahan sudah selesai?

In this sentence, selesai already carries the idea of “finished/over”, so sudah is not necessary.

resepsi pernikahan selesai = the wedding reception is over / has finished
If you say resepsi pernikahan sudah selesai, it is also correct, but you don’t have to add sudah.

Both are grammatical; the version without sudah is simply more compact. In Indonesian, adjectives/verbs like selesai, datang, pergi often don’t need an explicit past marker like English “has” or “had” when the time relationship is already clear from context or connectors like sesudah (“after”).

Is selesai an adjective (“finished”) or a verb (“to finish”) here?

In resepsi pernikahan selesai, selesai functions as a stative verb / adjective meaning “is finished / is over”.

Indonesian doesn’t sharply separate adjectives and some intransitive verbs the way English does. Words like:

selesai – finished / is finished
hilang – lost / disappear
datang – come / has come

can work like verbs or adjectives depending on context. Here you can understand it as “when the wedding reception was finished” or “when the wedding reception was over.”

What does resepsi pernikahan literally mean? How is pernikahan formed?

Resepsi pernikahan literally means “wedding reception”:

resepsi = reception (a loanword from European languages)
pernikahan = wedding / marriage (the event or institution)

Pernikahan is built from the root nikah (to marry) with the circumfix per-…-an:

nikah → per-nikah-an = the act/state/event of marrying → marriage / wedding

So resepsi pernikahan is the reception related to the wedding/marriage.

Why isn’t there any word like “the” – why not sesudah resepsi pernikahan itu selesai?

Indonesian has no articles like “the” or “a/an”. Nouns are usually bare:

resepsi pernikahan can mean a wedding reception or the wedding reception, depending on context.

If you need to be specific, you can add demonstratives or possessives:

resepsi pernikahan itu – that wedding reception / the wedding reception (already known in the context)
resepsi pernikahan kami – our wedding reception

In your original sentence, context will normally make it clear which wedding reception is meant, so resepsi pernikahan is enough.

What is the nuance of kami here? Why not kita?

Both kami and kita mean we, but:

kami = we (but not including the person being spoken to)
kita = we (including the person being spoken to)

In kami pulang bareng ke rumah, the speaker is saying “we went home together”, excluding the listener from that group. That’s why kami is used.

If the listener was part of that group that went home, you would normally use kita:

Sesudah resepsi pernikahan selesai, kita pulang bareng ke rumah.
= After the wedding reception was over, we (you and I and others) went home together.

Does pulang already mean “go home”? Why add ke rumah?

Yes, pulang basically means “to go back home / return home”, so in many sentences you can use pulang by itself:

Sesudah resepsi pernikahan selesai, kami pulang.

However, speakers often add ke rumah for emphasis or clarity, especially in casual speech:

pulang ke rumah = go home (literally: return to home)

It can sound a bit redundant to English ears, but it’s very natural in Indonesian. Sometimes ke rumah can also help avoid confusion if pulang might be interpreted as “go back” to some other previously mentioned place.

What does bareng mean, and how is it different from bersama or bersama-sama?

Bareng is a colloquial word meaning together / at the same time.

pulang bareng = go home together

More neutral or formal equivalents:

bersama – together, with
bersama-sama – together, jointly (often sounds more emphatic)

So you could say:

Kami pulang bareng ke rumah. (casual)
Kami pulang bersama ke rumah. (neutral)
Kami pulang bersama-sama ke rumah. (slightly more formal/emphatic)

In everyday spoken Indonesian, bareng is extremely common, especially among younger people and in informal contexts.

Is the word order pulang bareng ke rumah fixed, or can I say pulang ke rumah bareng?

Both are possible and understandable:

kami pulang bareng ke rumah
kami pulang ke rumah bareng

The most common, smooth-sounding order is usually:

pulang bareng ke rumah

because bareng directly modifies pulang (“went home together”), and ke rumah just adds the destination. But Indonesian word order is relatively flexible, so you will also hear pulang ke rumah bareng in speech.

Can I switch the order of the clauses, like in English: “We went home together after the wedding reception was over”?

Yes. You can say:

Sesudah resepsi pernikahan selesai, kami pulang bareng ke rumah.
Kami pulang bareng ke rumah sesudah resepsi pernikahan selesai.

Both are natural. Placing the time clause (sesudah…) at the beginning simply emphasizes the time frame a bit more, but in everyday speech both orders are fine.

There’s no past tense marker like “was” or “went”. How do we know this happened in the past?

Indonesian usually does not mark tense with special verb forms. Instead, it relies on:

Time expressions (kemarin, tadi, nanti, besok, etc.)
Connectors like sesudah / setelah (after), sebelum (before)
Context

In Sesudah resepsi pernikahan selesai, kami pulang bareng ke rumah, the word sesudah already indicates a sequence: first the reception finishes, then we (later) go home. In a narrative, readers automatically understand this as describing a past event, even though the verbs are not marked for tense. If you really wanted to emphasize past, you might add tadi (earlier) or kemarin (yesterday), but it’s not required.

Is this sentence formal, neutral, or informal? How would I make it more formal?

The sentence is mostly neutral–informal because of the word bareng, which is casual.

To make it more formal or suitable for writing or speeches, you could say:

Sesudah resepsi pernikahan selesai, kami pulang bersama ke rumah.
Setelah resepsi pernikahan usai, kami pulang bersama ke rumah.

Changes:

bareng → bersama
optionally selesai → usai (slightly more literary/formal)
sesudah → setelah (often felt as a bit more neutral/formal)

All of these are still quite natural.