We were invited to a wedding of a young man whom we know slightly. All the senior missionaries were invited, as is customary. We acquainted ourselves with the laws as well as the customs. Astonishing!
First of all, the groom must pay a bride price. It goes to the bride's family, and if they accept the money, the bride is obligated to follow through with the wedding. The Rwandan govt has put a cap on the bride price at somewhere around a thousand dollars. But for a young man, that's huge. Instead of the parents trying to help their daughter establish a home/household, it is spent by the parent's generation, including extended family. If one or the other needs to back out of the engagement, the bride price should be returned, but generally it's long gone.
The Govt requires that the couple be married civilly before any optional church wedding occurs. The "civil" wedding was the event we attended.
It was held in the Kimironco sector office. There is a large gathering room on the third floor. The back wall is decorated with the blue, green and yellow of the Rwandan flag. There were forty chairs set close together in the front of the room and another 60 or so back from that.
The front seats were about half full of brides and grooms. A man sat at the front table facing the audience with a recorder next to him. The weddings were supposed to start at 11:00, but the man started talking at about 11:30. He spoke, (all Kinyarwanda) for about 30 minutes, at which time the woman (the one with her hands folded under her chin) came in. She was apparently the officiator.
She spoke for a while, (still in Kinyarwanda) and by the time she was finished, (at about 12:15) all the brides and grooms were present. The room was full with lots of people milling around in the back, talking and laughing. It was about the same noise level as a Buffalo Wild wings. . . very noisy.
Then the weddings started. The noise level didn't change.The couple would go to the podium. The groom would raise his right arm, generally high in the air, and read something. Then the bride would do the same thing. Once the bride finished, there was usually a smattering of applause and then the couple went up to sit at the table on the stand where their fingerprints served as signatures.
It seemed so strange that never once did the bride and groom look at each other! No kiss, no exchange of rings, no touching of any kind. In fact there were about 20 weddings and never once did I see any couples take each other by the hand or touch at all.
Someone pointed out that many of them have been living together for a while and even have children together, so it's a legal event more than a romantic event. It was true that afterward I saw brides herding children.
The groom seemed very pleased that the invited guests had come. We already received a thank you note (electronically.)
For now the bride will go home to her family and the groom to his (or whatever the previous living arrangements had been. In a few months, they'll have a "church" wedding with a party and special clothing for the wedding party. That has a formal process that involves the finalizing of the dowry, how many cows are (symbolically in the cities, literally if they want cows in the country.) given, etc. The families are arranged on opposite sides of the rooms while the "negotiations" are made. That event is apparently where gifts from guests are usually given, though we already gave them something that was "easy to carry."
The wedding dresses ranged from white to rose to green to red to silvery blue. The one in the photo above is white lace over lime green. They were mostly very pretty with fancy headgear, too.
There were many weddings that day because the first Thursday of each month, weddings are free. If you want a private civil wedding, it costs you about $35. (50,000 RWF).
Strangest of all was the couple that both seemed to be mostly illiterate. He was the most casually dressed of all the grooms. He struggled to read his part and then she tried several times to start. But when she apparently mispronounced a word (or maybe she cussed?) the whole room erupted in laughter. So the officiator read it and the cute little bride repeated it. She did seem embarassed, and I wished I could tell her how cute she was, whether she could read the document or not.
I'm so glad we were invited. Each event like this helps us understand the culture a little better, to love the people for who they are and where they are and to examine my own cultural expectations.
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