I attended my first Nigerian wedding last Saturday and what an
event!
The first difference from Western weddings is the sheer number of
people who come. There were over 2000 people for the reception!
The bride specifies a ‘uniform’ for certain different parties and
friendship groups. SIM Missionaries had a navy blue, yellow and white uniform with
gold coffee beans printed on it! Not a fabric I would have chosen myself but oh
well. I had a dress made and it looked the part on the day.
The service began on time at 10am (very unusual by Nigerian
standards) and only half the church was full! During the first hour (of a 2
hour service!) people just kept arriving and being seated, even waltzing in as
the vows were being said! I found this insanely rude but nobody else was fazed
in the least!
The service was so long mainly in my opinion because half the time
was spent greeting and recognising elders from different churches, important
dignitaries and family members who had travelled. It felt like a real name-dropping
session, but respect is so important in Nigerian culture that I think that this
is just normal. There were 10 different
pastors from various churches there who performed some part of the service
whether it was the opening prayer, the solemnisation or the sermon.
They had many ‘special numbers’ from the church band, the choir and
a string orchestra and when they were finally joined they didn’t even kiss! The
‘you may now kiss the bride’ I’ve realised is a very Western thing!
Nigerian weddings have the usual best man, grooms men, maid of Honor
and brides maids but they also have ‘little grooms’ and ‘little brides’ (I
guess what we might call page boys and flower girls), a chairman and chair
lady, secretaries, Royal fathers and Mothers of the day, a lady in waiting and
a cake waiter!
In the programme there was a photo list of the order and groups of
pictures they wanted to pose for and there were about 30 of them! Examples
included “couple with university of Jos class 2005’, ‘couple with ECWA Rock
Haven Church Members’, no wonder they took so long to get to the reception in
the field outside the church!
The thing I loved most about the wedding was that Nigerians really
know how to celebrate! I loved the dancing in every part of the ceremony and reception.
Nigerians even use the offering in church as an excuse to dance. They have an
offering bag up the front and everyone has to get up from their seats and go to
the front to put money in this huge bag, but you dance on the way up and down
the aisles, so fun! You can’t help but move; the music is just contagious!
After the service, us SIM staff were seated right up front (mainly
because we were white!) at tables while rest of Nigerians sat on seats behind.
I felt really bad and quite uncomfortable with it because I was sure that the
majority of other guests there would have known the couple a lot better than I
did, but I had to respect the respect that was being paid me.
There is a Nigerian tradition called ‘spraying’ and it involved
showering the bride and groom with money! It’s usually just 10 and 20 Naira
notes (equivalent to 10c) but it’s funny to watch people dancing past spraying
the couple with notes and the bridesmaids walking behind collecting them all.
In most weddings it turns into a bit of a competition to see who has the most $
to spray, so they actually said they didn’t want it done at this wedding, but
some people ignored that request!
Another thing that was quite bizarre and hard to get my head around
was that there were armed guards everywhere! When I tried to take a photo of
the bride and groom cutting the cake, there was a guard with a massive AK47
right in the picture! I think it was partly due to the number of important
people at the wedding but also just due to the danger of a big wedding being a
target of trouble.
We received wedding favours galore, a plastic bowl with the couple’s
faces printed on it, a spiral bound pad with the same, pen with their names on
it and travel mug with couples names printed on it. Everyone (yes all 2000+
people) was also given a meal of fried chicken and various rice and yam
combinations. I hate to think how much the wedding cost!
I have another wedding to attend in a month so it’ll be interesting
to see how the next couple does things differently, they tell me it won’t be as
large, we will see!
I finally got my car 2 days ago and I’m LOVING driving. Getting in
the car each morning is like an adventure! You never know what you’re going to
see, what you’re going to have to dodge, how many times you’ll be stopped, how
many potholes you’ll drive through, how many motorbikes you’ll nearly hit….the
list goes on! It takes ALL your attention and concentration, so it’s exhausting
and I’m still getting used to finding the most convenient ways to get to places
taking into consideration the horrible traffic in peak hour and downtown Jos,
but it’s a blast.
Please keep me in your prayers though as a navigate the roads;
people say that those who drive in Jos have special driving angels that protect
them, I’m trusting this is true J
