My First Traditional Marriage

_{Photo by Gaff Multimedia}

When it's comes to marriage, some part of the world don't recognise a union unless the traditional rite has been performed first, unlike some countries where all you have to do is a court wedding and a church wedding (also known as a white wedding) and that's it, you become man and wife.

Well that isn't the case in our beloved country Nigeria and today, I was privileged to witness for the first time in my life, a Nigerian traditional marriage. Now bear in mind that there are different traditional marriage rites for different tribes in Nigeria and the one I witnessed today was that of the Igbo tribe.

We had arrived at the venue a bit late due to how far away from civilization the village of the bride was. We had to pay one of the motorcyclist we saw there just so that he could lead the way to the house while we followed him. The funny thing was that we later found out that the motorcyclist didn't even know the place, he was stopping at intervals to ask people for directions.

Well luckily for me who wanted to witness the whole thing as this was my first time attending a traditional marriage, I got there just in time to see the women negotiating the bride price (also known as a dowry). I was asked to film the whole thing so I got a bit close to them and the prices I heard coming out of this women's mouth sent shivers down my spine. I never knew getting married was this expensive, no wonder I've been seeing myself dressed like a priest lately.

Anyways, they finally bargained at a price and that was when they (the women) started to sing and dance. Why wouldn't they, when they just received a hefty sum of money. Well right after the singing and dancing, that was when I saw for myself that one thing I've always seen in Nigerian movies and thought it no longer existed.

The bride was given a cup filled with palm wine and asked to go give it to her husband and that was how this lady started walking all over the place, "looking" for her husband that was seated right in front of her. In my mind I was like "Who else are you looking for? Your second husband?"

Anyway I got to realise that her pretending not to see him at first was part of the whole thing and that it was something she just had to do. Well she finally gave him the palm wine which he drank and later placed some money into the cup and then they both took the cup to a man who prayed and blessed their marriage before they both proceeded to go sit on a seat kept specially for them.

That was all I saw and that was more than enough for me to see to come to the conclusion that if ever I want to get married, I will go get a wife from one of those countries who only need white weddings or court weddings.

No one told me tradition was this expensive.