Hello Ladies and gentlemen of Hive. Do you want to know how we celebrate traditional marriages for my tribe? Then just keep reading.
I am from the Yoruba tribe and we occupy the South Western part of Nigeria. So it is usually fun.
Wedding ceremony is one of the happy ceremonies we do in my tribe. People travel far and wide to rejoice with the bride to be and the family of the the bride to be.
The first ceremony that comes before the actual wedding is the introduction. This is when the lady or fiancée brings home the fiance or the man to her parent. The fiancée's parent also invite important members of the family to come witness the occasion. The man also travel down to the lady's house with his parents and important members of his family as well. They introduce themselves and then they agree on a date to have the wedding
Now to how the traditional wedding ceremony is done. It is also called engagement ceremony,depending on the plan on how the whole wedding ceremony will go, the engagement ceremony or traditional wedding can occur a day before church wedding and reception where the guest will be really entertained with food and other activities. Or it could happen early morning before the other events of the wedding takes place.
The family of the groom will come with a lot of items to the traditional wedding. Items like several tubers of yam, a goat, box of clothes(traditional clothes not ready made dresses), palm oil,ground nut,kolanut, bitter cola,Holy Book(either Bible or Quran) usually wrapped, traditional gins or palm wine. The list is endless and items varies with families. All these items are brought to the traditional wedding ground.
The programe is usually anchored by event moderators usually two women. They begin with prayer. After prayer, the women start with histories of the wedding ceremony and other relevant talks for the event. The man or husband to be is then invited to the ceremonial ground accompanied by his friends usually with an entrance song by the moderators.
He stands in between the family of the bride to be and his own family with his friends. He and his friends will prostrate to greet the family of the bride to be as directed by the moderator. One of the moderator will ask him why he and his friends are here. He'll then answer that, he is there with his friends to pluck a beautiful flower. Lol, you might be wondering what does flower got to do with a wedding ceremony. Well, the flower actually represents the lady i.e his fiancée. So he meant he is is there to get married to the lady, he'll then mention her name.
The moderator then continues that since his intention is know., he will have to request for the Lady in some special kind of way which is to prostrate,to depict begging for the Lady to be released to him to marry. He and his friends then prostrate, it could be once or several times, depending on how the moderator anchors the ceremony. After his greeting has been accepted, he then goes to sit at a seat designed for him and his lady to await her.
A member of the bride's to be family usually a girl or lady comes out to read the proposal letter to further ask for the lady's hand in marriage. She reads it out loud and the family of the bride to be will respond by accepting the letter to show that they are willing to release their daughter to be married into that family.
By this time, the bride to be would have been ready to come out as well.
The moderators welcome the bride to be(covers her head in transparent but beautiful veil) and her friends in to the ceremonial ground with a song as well. She will dance her best into the arena as families of the groom and well wishers spray her money has she dances in with her friends. A trusted member of the bride's family picks up her money for her. She then goes to greet her parent by kneeling down and her parents say words of prayer for her and bless her marriage.
Some get emotional at this point, especially moms 😂. They cry that their beloved daughter is finally leaving the house to go get married. The moderators don't help matters either, they set the mood with their very emotional songs that even if you don't want to cry before, their songs will make you do so 😂😂.
She then goes to the family of her husband and greet them as well. She proceeds to the gifts brought by her in-laws to be. She will be asked to pick the most important thing to her from the items brought. Most brides pick the Holy Book to show that the word of God is the most important thing to them.
She then dance her way to where her husband to be is seated, before she seats, she kneels before her man and he will in turn pack a lot of money into her purse, some even go extra mile to bring a sack or bigger bag 🤣🤣. Until the man does this, the lady will continue to kneel. After that the man then open the veil on the bride to be face to confirm that she is really the woman he want to marry. He then carry help her up to sit with him on their couple's chair.
Music and merriment follows and the ceremony is over.
Thank you for reading, see you all in my next post