Wedding

Weddings are a great way to learn about local cultures and traditions. We recently had the opportunity to participate in a wedding happening in our village of Isgoufa. It was a day full of food, dancing and fancy dresses. Since our village is only about 45 families we expected this wedding to be relatively small, but there is nothing like a wedding to bring people from near and far. This wedding was overflowing with several hundred people.

My village friends insisted that I get henna (a skin dying paste) so that I would be appropriately decorated for the big day. My friend Mina came Sunday night, before the wedding and covered the bottom of my feet with the henna. She wrapped them in plastic bags to help them stay moist and really make the design dark. My hands were decorated with a detailed design and I was left to sit for a few hours while it dyed my skin. The girls also got designs on their hands.

The next day at lunch time the girls and I went to the bride's house. The daytime portion of the wedding was mostly for the ladies and some immediate family. They had killed a cow the day before and served us the intestines and other internal organs in a flavorful tagine. After the meal we headed into a room where we celebrated the bride. The family had hired a DJ and wedding planner to help her change into multiple dresses, lift her in special chairs and perform other wedding traditions.

Lots of clapping!

After a little while the groom arrived with gifts and special traditional items to bless the couple. He came and sat next to the bride while the crowd sang blessings over them, played drums and cymbals and clapped (see video below). After a while the bride and groom went into a room to change their clothes. They would end up changing 4 or 5 times. While we waited for them to change we would sing and dance along with hired wedding singers. Everyone was happy and enjoying themselves.

A couple hours later it was time to return home to change for the evening portion of the wedding. We got ourselves ready in traditional dresses and waited for our neighbors to call and tell us it was time. This part of the wedding was for all of us. We walked through the dark streets to the house where the wedding was held. A huge tent had been set up for the men to eat in, while the women filled the house. We ate a two course meal with roasted chicken and beef and prunes. After we ate we headed out to the wedding to watch the traditional dancing and chanting by some local men.

We made it home around 2am. It was a lot of fun and a really wonderful way to get to know more people in our village. The following morning a neighbor knocked on our gate with fresh Moroccan donuts "sfinj" saying thank you for coming to the wedding and inviting the girls and I for another party. We joined most of the women again at the brides house for lunch and ate more good food. Then someone pulled out some hand drums and the women gathered into a large room and sang songs and danced for a couple of hours. We finally finished the wedding off with Moroccan mint tea and cookies, followed by one last dance where everyone stood in two circles, one inside the other, and sang and clapped. It was a full, but wonderful, couple of days!