PCV Wedding

A PCV friend of mine got married over the Halloween weekend. When she asked me to be her maid of honor I said yes, who wouldn't but I never thought to ask when she would be getting married. She is from Georgia and I never thought that she would be getting married on the Georgia/Florida weekend but that is the weekend that she chose. I had to tell her that if she was still back in Georgia she would have to chose a different day because no one would have come to the wedding.

The wedding was held in Techiman, which is about 7 hours from my site so I left on Thursday to go and meet her in Kumasi. On Friday we left for Techiman and went to her fiance's family house and they cooked us a wonderful meal of fresh peas and carrots!

On Saturday we met the rest of the family and had our hands and feet panted in henna. The designs were beautiful. My friend also had her chest and back painted since she was the bride. That night we went to a dance party in her honor. We went to bed thinking that we would have until noon on Sunday to get ready for the wedding, we were wrong.

At 8am we got a knock on our room door, my friend needed a family representative and two witnesses to go to the mosque to represent her. So I got to go into the mosque and be a family representative, but since I was a woman and it takes two women to equal one man they had to find another woman, so one of her fiance's aunts came with us.

The ceremony was interesting. The imam talked about the responsibilities of the family and how divorce is not permitted in Islam. He then said that if there were any problems in the marriage that it was up to the witnesses to help resolve the differences. If we could not resolve the problems then it would be up to the father's and then it would be up to a council decided by the Imam. The Imam then said some prayers and when we left the mosque the couple was married.

We went back to the hotel and I told my friend that she was now married. We both had a good laugh at that since she had not been there and and had not said anything. At noon another friend of ours performed a modified American ceremony for her. This way she would feel like she was married. After that little ceremony the couple took pictures and they danced just like any other wedding.

On Monday we went to the District Assembly for me to sign a document saying that they were married according to the Ghana government. When I did this the man also told me that I was responsible for working out their problems.

As we left the District Assembly I told my friend that they were responsible for their own problems no matter what I had been told for the past 2 days.

It was a fun weekend and the henna is still on my hands and feet. I am waiting to see how long it will last.