Wedding Wows

When a man wants to get married here, he pays a “knocking fee” to the parents of the bride.  This fee allows him to sit down with her parents and negotiate the price he will pay them to marry their daughter.   Negotiations also include a lengthy list of gifts that the groom will give to family members.  When an agreement is reached, they have an engagement party.  He may take his bride and begin payments; they are legally married.  Once the entire price is paid, they can get formally married if they want to.  Many Christians getting married now want a formal church wedding and men must pay for years to obtain it. 

It is tradition that the couple move in with the grooms parents – it’s probably financially impossible for them to do otherwise until the knocking fee is paid in full.  Therefore the groom’s mother must approve of the bride.  I’ve personally seen the mother-in-law break up marriages because of disputes with the bride. 

A very high percentage of people don’t come to an agreement before the woman is pregnant and an “out of wedlock fee” is imposed of GHC 200 per child.  This must be paid before the knocking can begin. 

On a side note:  Most old people don’t know when they were born so they adopt a birthday, it’s always 1 Jan 19_ _.   It also used to be customary for parents to cut their tribal mark in the cheeks of their babies making huge scars – it’s illegal now but most old people you see have the scars.

      

It’s also legal and common, for our long robed friends to practice polygamy here (our church does NOT). 

Knowing this, you can imagine how I felt when we got an invitation to a wedding; from the guy on the scooter, who delivers bi-weekly to our office for FedEx.  Oh my lucky stars!  We hardly know the guy but gladly provided the expected gift, in exchange for the experience…and a few photos.  I’m shameless aren’t I?

I prodded Elder Asay along all morning so we could find the place and be there on time – 10:00 am sharp!   When you don’t speak Fante, and there are no addresses or signs it can get a bit tricky!  We found a young girl to show us the way up an incredibly steep and rutted dirt road (it’s amazing where a Toyota Corolla can go).  Although there was no evidence of a wedding taking place, we finally found the place at 10:15.

Did they get cold feet?  Where are all the guests?  Oh I forgot TIG (this is Ghana) so they will all be late…SAT (standard Africa time)!  So we did just that…sat, and hoped I wouldn’t need to use a washroom – there aren’t any.

Plenty of time to take pics of the Pentecostal Church and the glamorous décor.  This is where the nuptials will sit.

Someone passed out the Programme for the event at 10:45.  Suddenly the anticipated 30 minute ceremony looked like it would take a couple of hours when it finally got started.  It kind of reminded me of the English wedding of Charles and Diana – yikes that ages me!  The acknowledgement section was interesting advertising.  Super glad I didn’t drink any water this morning – a tradition on Sundays as well. 

Guests started filing in around 11:00 and finally around 11:15 the preacher welcomed everyone and in true Pentecostal fashion, began the praying and singing and dancing…African style.   To the singing of the guests, the bride inched down the isle with her father in traditional thanksgiving robes.   It was in Fante so I’m not sure what song it was, but not the traditional wedding march.

Elder Asay asked one of the relatives to sneak up there with the rest of those taking pictures of the bride and groom and snap one for us.  She did, 3 feet away from their faces...here are her un-edited pics – we thought the picture would feature them together…I guess we should have been more specific.  TIG.  Both of them looked like a nervous wreck and didn’t crack a smile until it was entirely over.

It was fun to stand, sway, clap listen to their singing and smile with the rest of the guests as the programme unrolled.  Ah ha ha, nearly everyone was swaying – it’s a bit too close to dancing and Elder Asay doesn’t do that!  Sister Fife is right...I look like a marshmallow in a bowl of cocoa puffs.

It was interesting to note that the Brides Maid actually has important duties to perform for the Bride besides taking care of the train and holding the bouquet – like dabbing the perspiration from her face.

The Best Man didn’t dab perspiration, he wiped sweat...and held the microphone for him.

Shortly after the ceremony began, a gang of bikers roared in.  Co-workers of the groom.

The Preacher got after them several times during the Programme for their cat calls, outbursts of laughter and drunken dancing at unscheduled times.  The first time he asked them politely.  After that he rang a school bell until they were quiet.  The groom knew he was already in trouble, so he didn’t even look at them.

Twice during the program, everyone filed past these “offering portals” and pretended like they threw money in. 

The best part of the ceremony was after they were officially married and he went to kiss the bride.  First he slowly rolled up the veil inch by inch – that took a good 2 minutes.  After he knew he couldn’t delay any longer, he gave her a quick peck and the guests went wild with squeals and laughter!  You never see any kind of display of public affection anywhere here.  It's even common to see men sitting on one side of the church and women sitting on the other etc. 

The get away car is only decorated with flowers and ribbons, no smeared cookies or shaving cream.  There is a camera man that captures every moment of the wedding and even drives ahead of the nuptials car to film the drive.  3 hours later, they were ready to get in the car and go to the reception…we were not.  We gave him the gift and giggled all the way home – this experience was almost better than the trip to Mankessim on market day.