African Wedding!!

This weekend we were very privileged to attend our very first African Wedding and was it quite the adventure! So here is a rundown of the experience. It all began Friday evening after we had finished teaching our last business class of the week. Then we met Yvonne and Dennis who were helping us travel to Samuel’s, the groom’s house to stay the night. We hoped on a tour looking bus and just rode on it for a fair amount of time.

To be honest we have no idea where we were when we got off the bus. But we just trusted in those showing us the way and went to Samuel’s place. It is very interesting, but when Ghanaians feed you they just bring you out food and then leave. I really wish they would stay and eat with us, but I guess that is just not the case here. Anyways we were told to wake up to be ready to leave for the wedding being held in Tema at 4:30 am. So at four the next morning we were up and getting ready. Another thing about Ghana they are hardly ever on time. After being ready to leave at 4:30 we didn’t end up leaving until like six.

They were very nice and gave us our own taxi to ride in. However, I think they forgot to give our taxi driver very good directions. Because around the time we should have been getting to the wedding our taxi driver started stopping like ever 100 feet to ask for directions. It didn’t matter if we were in a busy intersection or not, he would just stop. On the freeway he was driving really slowly and all the drivers passing us were yelling at him. Anyways, after sometime he just pulled the car off the side of the road and said that we were going to wait for the others. He never admitted to being real lost, it was great. Later we found out that our taxi driver was actually the brother of the groom.

The bride.

Upon arriving at the wedding we were greeted and treated like celebrities. You would have almost thought we were more important than the bride and groom. They even fed us food in a private room before all the festivities started. I thought at first everyone was going to get some, but it turns out it was just for us.

Our food. The rice was so spicy!! 

It was very interesting to watch the wedding. I just wish I knew twi or that they spoke English. For the most part I was just very confused to everything that was happening. At one point in the ceremony they introduced all of us and had us going sit behind the bride and groom. The only other people behind them were like the moms, dads, grandmas, and grandpas.

Yay, for cameras and documenting moments like this. 

I think Ghanaians favorite thing to do is dance. They had a special song for just us Americans to dance to. I don’t think have had so many cameras that close to me before. They were all highly amused with us. They even had some of us participate in a dance competition. Talk about awkward!

Us with the bride and groom. 

All in all though we all had a great time! We are not sure if we will be attending another Ghanaian wedding, but we sure are never going to forget our first Ghanaian wedding!

Ashley p!