Our First Malawian Wedding - Part 2

Our invitation said that the second part of the day was 'from' 1pm in a Church hall the other side of town. We showed up at 1 and there was no one there except the usual scattering of people just hanging around, a DJ playing phenomenally loud music and a couple of armed guards. A friend of the mother of the bride was also there and dressed in a brilliant black and gold African outfit, including that head scarf / tie thing with a giant bow. She took our present and saw it locked in a room – there was later a bit of confusion as to whether we were going to process and formally 'give' the gift (most people didn't bring one) but we explained this wasn't necessary (in part frightened that they would open it in front of everyone and say 'oh, great, towels'!).

We decided to go and get some lunch and came back an hour or so later – the bridal party were just arriving (change of outfit for the mother of the bride, same white bridal dress and red bridesmaids dresses for the rest of the party). There must now have been about 300-400 people seated in the hall and again the bridal party shuffle danced up the middle to where a DJ, dressed quite a bit like Crocodile Dundee, started giving speeches and explaining stuff, again in Chichewa – although a few people kindly translated some parts for us.

Then, for three hours, people shuffle danced (1,2; 1,2; 1,2,3,4) up the aisle and crowded round the bride, or the groom, or the parents, or the bridesmaids, or any combination of them and just kept throwing loads and loads of cash. We had a few goes and learnt that there would be a target the family needed to meet the cost of the wedding and that this would carry on until they reached it. There was a table set up to count the money and another table where you could change large notes into small so as to be able to carry on throwing for longer!

A few hours into the money throwing ushers started handing round bottles of fanta – it was very hot and sticky and we'd sunk ours before we realised that this was for toasts and to mark the start of more rounds of money throwing! Oops. No one seemed to mind too much – in fact we were called up to the front at one point to stand & have our photos taken as being folk that had come all the way from the UK – didn't like to point out that we were here anyway.

There was a big throne thing for the bride and groom and the bridesmaids kept mopping their brows. When they'd reached the money target the cake cutting began – cake covered a whole table, in fact it was three or four different cakes of varying sizes and tiers – then everyone queued up, threw some more money and got a piece of cake! The groom picked up the bride and everyone cheered. The bride knelt in front of her in-laws and gave them cake and everyone cheered. All the unmarried women were gathered at the front, given presents and everyone cheered. The bride threw her bouquet and we made our excuses and headed home.

Everyone had been very welcoming and it was great to be able to see it – we're shattered today, I can only imagine how Mr & Mrs Martin are now feeling!

F x