Today I went to my very first Tanzanian wedding! Peter, a Tanzanian friend of many Peace Corps Volunteers invited us to the wedding of his younger brother Francis. The wedding was absolutely beautiful!
The ceremony started at 2 pm took place at a Catholic Church in town. It was a pretty standard and traditional service/ mass. It reminded me a little bit of America, except for the fact that all of the guests were late. In true Tanzanian fashion, some of the guests were over an hour late to the ceremony! After the ceremony, the wedding party got in decorated cars and drove in a procession around town. There was one truck that played music and people danced on it. Once the entire city of Mbeya was aware of the marriage, the wedding party went to a nearby hotel for pictures and the guests went to the groom’s family’s house for food and drinks. The wedding reception started around 8 pm. We all gathered at a reception hall in town. Similar to America, there was a lot of food, alcohol, and dancing. However, the wedding reception in Tanzania was much more formal than I was used to. There were several different rituals that we watched. Some were familiar, like the cake cutting, and others were very unique. For example, there is a part of the wedding where all the guests dance up to the stage and present the bride and groom with gifts. The bride and groom also present small cakes to everyone in the wedding party and their parents. We didn’t leave the reception until almost 1 am! Then we went to a club and danced the night away…
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| Wedding invitation |
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| Wedding ceremony at the church |
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| Francis and his bride Anna |
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| Dancing guests and procession of cars after ceremony |
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| The bride and groom at the reception |
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| The Mbeya PCVs at the wedding reception |
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