The wedding was a full day with 3 different components. There was civil ceremony, a church ceremony and the reception. This was a new concept for us, but more surprising was the information that we were to have 3 different outfits and change between each part. Oops.
The day started off with an early rise to get ready.
The family had arranged a hair dresser for Anja. (No this is not the hair dresser. :) This is Guy's little brother lending a helping hand. ) I had told Anja that I would gladly help out in any way I could, but that I was hopeless with hair. Some of you are probably on step ahead of me and can see where this is going to go. Unfortunately, despite the best of intentions, Anja's fine caucasian hair just would not behave the way that the hair dresser thought it should and 2 min before we were supposed to be out the door, I heard a stressed out "haaaviiiilllahhhh....." coming from the mirror. I go into panic mode. I don't do hair. My attempt at a calming "It's fine." didn't seem to do the trick, so after a few hopeless jabs with bobby pins and I decided to switch tactics to "it will work for the first ceremony. We will have lots of time to fix it before the church service." And off we went.
Here we are before the ceremony. It was supposed to start right at 9:00, but in true Cameroonian style, started 2 hours later when the officiant arrived.
Oh well, lots of time for taking pictures ...
This plant is considered to be a symbol of peace. You'll see it in a lot of photos.
Another little surprise for us was that we were to sit on the stage with Guy and Anja to represent Anja's family. There went our plans to be taking pictures and filming the ceremony. We passed our cameras off to enthusiastic volunteers and assumed our positions.
This is the stage from the back of the room. We are sitting on the far left.
The crowd. (Can you spot our driver behind the kids?)
The Ceremony:
The most memorable moment for me was when the officiant asked Guy (in french of course) if he wanted a monogamous or polygamous marriage. Hee hee. Poor Anja was not given a chance to answer the same question - but being the upstanding guy that Guy is, he answered with a solomn "monogamy." At this point the crowd erupted into cheers and broke out into a monogamy song. We've got some beautiful video footage of this that we will try to get posted. It gets better... the officiant looks down at the 2 stamps he has on the table. He gingerly picks one up, presses it into the stamp pad and tests it on a strip of scrap paper. Yep, it's the right one. He then stamps the wedding document 6 times with a bold red "Monogamy." Ha. love it. (FYI - a little factoid. As you may have guessed polygamy is legal and accepted in Cameroon. - though it is not as common as it used to be.)
Signing the papers.
Another little bit of excitement came when the officiant told Guy and Anja that they could now say their vows to eachother. They didn't know that there were vows at this ceremony. And they were planning to read the traditional vows from a program for the church ceremony. Surprise! Without missing a beat they both pulled off lovely vows off the top of their heads, and in more than one language!
The vows and rings.
The kiss.And the party afterwards, full of singing dancing and more picture taking.
Scott and Talas
This picture does not do the scene justice. Imagine them all singing at the top of their lungs!
No comments:
Post a Comment