Ugandan Wedding

Monicah, the Ugandan who I work with in Save the Mothers, invited me to a wedding of her brother in her hometown in southwestern Uganda. The wedding was a two day event. The first day, Friday, was the introduction. This is a cultural event, where the brides' family gives the bride to the grooms' family. The groom has paid the brides' family for their loss probably in cows or something. One of the pictures is with the grooms' father taking the hand of the bride as the brides' family gives her away. The bride and groom have separate outfits for these days (as do all the guests). The bride wore a blue and white dress for the introduction which was matched by the blue and white cakes in the picture. The cake was in the shape of baskets that they serve food in sometimes. The cake brought along another tradition where they counted down and on zero people sprayed confetti and alcohol (from bottles that were shaken vigorously during the countdown). It was quite a scene as you can see the beginning of it in one of the pictures. It was good that it was all outside and could make a mess out there. After they handed out cake to everyone, the brides' family gave the grooms' family presents.

The next day was the ceremony that was held in the church. We didn't end up going to this part because there was no gas (this is during the Kenya crisis and Uganda didn't have gas or if you could get gas it was around $6/litre or $24/gallon - I wouldn't want to pay that and Ugandans really don't have that type of money). Instead, we got set up for the reception. There were people making piles of food, so I figured lots of people were coming to the reception. Suddenly, when it was lunch time there were people on long lines to get food because the whole village decided to come for the food. Anyone who decided that they didn't have enough to eat or didn't want to make a meal brought their family over for the wedding and went through the line once or twice! The whole village came to the reception as well and we all sat under tents. The bridal procession was brought in with a band and people dancing. There was great entertainment with people singing and dancing even though I couldn't understand the words of the song. Then they had more cakes that matched their white and maroon dresses and there was the same spraying of confetti and alcohol all over the place! There were also the typical speeches given at the wedding and they were still long but I didn't understand a word of it, so I had a reason as to why I was daydreaming! It was quite interesting to watch and I thought that it was great that it was outside and it was so beautiful there, but then it started to pour rain! Thankfully, we were under tents so that was a bit better! But the party continued into the night and all the young people in the village danced until all hours of the evening.

Enjoy the pictures!