Wedding Season

In my former life I was a wedding coordinator, and it’s fair to say that I’ve seen over 200, maybe closer to 300, weddings.  Glowing brides dressed in white, nervous grooms, pushy parents, and many, many unity candles.  I did not attend the receptions; I was merely the agent that held open doors, dismissed bridesmaids, and made sure that the bride and her father made it down the aisle.  And I’ve got stories to last a lifetime.  Like the time the groom and all the groomsmen were stuck in an elevator at a fancy downtown hotel.  Or the time a bride ripped her dress right down the back and my fabulous intern sewed her right into it (“I’m an airline pilot,” the bride said.  “If I can fly to Europe without going to the restroom, I can make it through this night.” Rockstar).  Or the multiple times that brides tried to convince me that a Kelly Clarkson song counted as “sacred, traditional music” required by our chapel rules. 

But nothing prepared me for weddings in Morocco.  It’s been said that the best way for a Peace Corps Volunteer to survive a Moroccan wedding is to simply not go to a Moroccan wedding.  That sounds mean, and I don’t want to disrespect Moroccan culture.  But as an outsider, Moroccan weddings are difficult: I can’t understand what is happening, they start late in the evening and continue until dawn, and people make me dance all night—making me feel like a monkey performing in a circus.  By 3 am, my body is spent and my brain is mush, but the party continues. Plus, gender rules require Pete and I to be separated from the moment we arrive, so I don’t have anyone to make jokes/commiserate with through the evening.

Typical wedding garb: a Moroccan Kaftan

By the time I see a bride on her wedding day, she has spent the past few days getting pampered.  She’s been to the hammam (public bath) with her female friends and relatives, and she’s also had beautiful henna drawn on her hands and feet (though sometimes this is done at the wedding).  During the wedding night, guests typically eat a two-course meal late in the evening, around 10pm, of wedding chicken (fried and delicious) and then a beef and prune tagine.  Then, for the rest of the night, a band plays loud, traditional music, females dance together, and the bride changes her outfit up to seven times.  Sometimes the bride and groom are together, and frequently she is on display alone.

At least they don't put me in one of these.

Once, I had to the chance to see exactly where that beef and prune tagine came from.  The day before a large wedding with some 500 guests, a local family slaughtered a cow in the neighborhood streets.  Women gathered in the streets to sing as the cow was killed.  By watching the video below, you can see the singing, the chanting, and the death of the wedding dinner.  If you are uncomfortable with seeing a cow die (it’s not up close, but you can still see some blood and, um, chopping), don’t watch; just listen to the women chant in thanksgiving to God.

Another time, our host mother called us over to talk about taking a trip to another city to see our host cousin, who had gotten married the weekend before.   We would leave the next day.  I felt bad about missing our cousin’s wedding, so it seemed worth the 3-hour trip to see her in her new house.  When we arrived, we were soon served wedding chicken and then a beef and prune tagine.  There were lots of people there, and more trickling in by the hour.  I started to feel suspicious.  Then, I was dressed in a caftan.  Slowly it dawned on me: we were at a wedding, this one for the groom’s family to see.  TRICKED.  Peter and I spent the evening apart, and I was forced to dance and dance and dance.  By 3 am, I was exhausted.   By 4 am, I realized my host mother had no plans for resting.  By 5 am, I realized that the time had changed and it was actually still 4 am and our host mother planned on keeping us awake all night and then catching a 7 am bus back home to our town.  The music played through the morning hours, and I shuffled my feet with women who pulled me up by my tired arms to dance with them.   I wish I had the language skills to say, “I feel like you tricked us into coming to a wedding and staying awake all night,” but instead I played the part of obedient host-daughter-monkey on the longest night of the year.

Dressed up in someone's kaftan and someone else's Sahara headpiece.
 And dancing, always dancing.

Next time we receive a wedding invitation, I have a new excuse: I don’t like to go to weddings because I feel like people pay more attention to me than to the bride, and that just isn’t right.   When we show up at weddings, we are a novelty.  People want to dress me up and take their picture with me.  It’s exhausting for me, and it’s unfair to the actual woman who should be celebrated that day.  Besides, I’ve seen enough weddings to last me a long, long time.