Although a long time ago I have already written about a wedding ceremony that actually happened on my very second day in Ghana, I think it`s time to give you a little update about it again. I think it`s always the same way when you are getting to know something new (a new culture, a new person): at first you mark some of the differences and you think that you have understood something of the unknown, but later when you stop being an outsider and start getting involved, you realize that you hardly understood anything. Well, at least this is how I feel about the wedding ceremonies for instance…
The other weekend one of the school founder`s daughter got married. Alright, first of all I have a feeling that here the parents opinion about the ideal partner for their child counts a lot more that at home: without the permission of the parents a marriage would be a pretty difficult thing to carry out. Still before the engagement there's a period of time called 'knocking' during which the families have time to make some investigation about the other family: they want to make sure that there's no genetic disease or unpleasent personality trait in the other family. Jumping a bit in time, about the actual marriage I was told that the preparations already started weeks before the ceremony, when the two families met to discuss the marriage: mostly the financial aspects – which means that they agreed about what presents and how much money the bride`s family was asking for in turn of the marriage. The man's family is supposed to give pre give presents to the bride's mother ofr giving birth to her, to her father for raising up her and to her brothers for taking care of her and scraing away all the other men who would want to marry her. To me all these show that the woman is highly respected and considered to be of a great value. The actual ceremony stared with a traditional part, just for the two families that this time was held on the school property. At first only the family members were present – the presents were given to the girl`s family. (Unfortunately since the ceremony was held in twi – the local language – I could only mostly follow it.) Later the guy`s family brought in the groom. He was asked some questions – like if he was sure that he wanted to marry the girl. Then before bringing in the bride, her family was asking for some more money: they said that otherwise they wouldn`t give the bride to the groom. All this of course also involved a lot of music and dancing. I was also told that this money question is already more like a playful thing nowadays, but in the old days it used to be pretty serious. After all these the bride`s family brought her in, too, and she was also asked some questions before she could take her seat next to the groom. She wasn`t wearing the typical white European wedding dress anyway, instead she had a beautiful blue and white Ghanaian dress. During this ceremony – which also involved a lot of singing and praying – a pastor was present as well, who at the end gave the rings to the bride and the groom and held a pretty similar speech to those ones that we have at an average European wedding ceremony. At the end, the two families also made a pledge that if any problem occur between the couple, they are not going to get involved – although I was also told, that lots of time this doesn`t become the reality. Since hospitality is also very important to Ghanaians (which means that if you host somebody, you are pretty much supposed to give some food or something like that to them), at the end of this traditional ceremony, all the guests were given some packs of snacks, too.
After this ceremony in the morning, a few hours later we also attended a ceremony at the church, where already a lot more guests were present. Here most of the ceremony sounded familiar, too, but an additional part was for example, that before signing their names as a confirmation of the marriage, the freshly married couple also had to kneel down so that they can be blessed by the pastor and also a lot of others. Besides, after all these we still stayed there for more prayer and dancing.
Finished with the ceremony at the church, we went to a very elegant hotel`s garden, where we still had some speeches, they cut the wedding cake and food was also served to everybody.
An other interesting part though, that at the school property, we actually had a two-day-long party: a lot of the guest stayed at the school property all weekend, during which they were enjoying some music and drinks as well.
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