Church Wedding in Uganda

Yesterday I was honored to attend my first wedding here in Uganda. It's a complex story, but in short the LCMU (Lutheran Church Mission in Uganda) has a policy that their pastors and church leaders should have a church wedding even if they have already been married in the traditional Ugandan wedding ceremony, which is called an Introduction.  So two of our vicars who are anticipating ordination in October arranged for a joint church wedding this weekend here at Kampala Lutheran Church.

~preaching~ The wedding invitations indicated that the wedding would start at 2pm. No one was there at 2pm. Not even the wedding parties! By about 2:30 we had everyone except one groom and some guests had started to arrive. We finally got underway around 3pm.  Reverend Charles Bameka led the liturgy, fellow missionary Rev. Jacob Gillard did the vows, and I was asked to preach. It's kinda funny - here I was preaching to two couples, both of whom have been married much, much longer than I have and both of whom have several children already. So my wedding sermon didn't try to warn them about the difficult times that may lie ahead - they already know. In fact, these two vicars went to seminary in South Africa, spending ten months of each year away from their families for four years. They know hardship in a way Krista and I probably never will. It was a pleasure being able to preach my first wedding sermon at the wedding of my fellow vicars and good friends.

~accepting cash gifts~ The church wedding here in Uganda is heavily influenced by Western culture. So the church is decorated with bows and ribbons and balloons. The bride wears a white wedding dress and the groom wears a tuxedo. There is a best man and a maid of honor along with groomsmen and bridesmaids and a flower girl and a boy counterpart. There are flowers and it's all very expensive, just like in the States.  The wedding service itself comes from the Lutheran Worship Agenda with a few minor modifications. Part of the service is signing a marriage certificate. There are hymns and microphones and everything. At the conclusion of the service the bride(s) and groom(s) stand at the front with huge baskets and the congregation comes forward with cash gifts for the couple.

After the wedding was the reception.  There was a very brief reception for Vicar Samuel Ogwang because they were having a much larger reception back in their home village.  Vicar Jerome Wamala, though, had a full reception at Kampala Lutheran Church.  There were hints of reception elements from the West but also quite a few things I had never seen before. There is a very, very, very slow ceremonial walk that the bride and groom do as they enter the reception and anytime they move about. They don't get to mix and mingle with the people at the reception. They sit at the head table unless they are participating in some other ceremonial activity. There are two separate tents, one for the groom's side and one for the bride's side.

~cake cutting at the head table~ Now the wedding cakes were really special. ~children watching~ Krista made them! That's right. My wife made 4 round cakes and one rectangular cake for the wedding reception - all double-layered cakes with white frosting and light green accents (the wedding colors were white and light green).  The round cakes had chocolate between the layers.  If you recall, Krista left for the States on Wednesday morning, July 22nd.  The wedding was Saturday, July 25th. So she made these cakes, frosted them, wrapped them, and froze them.  Then it was my job to remove them from the freezer, defrost them overnight before the wedding, and transport them to the reception safely! No pressure, huh? Well, they made it safely to the reception and were fully defrosted by the time they were served and they were absolutely amazing. Delicious! American-style cake is rare around here, so Krista is often asked to make cakes for special occasions but this was her first wedding cake - she did a wonderful job.

~giving the groom a drink~ Part of the reception includes the bride feeding the groom - not the "shove the cake in each other's face" style that sometimes occurs in the States but a much more dignified and symbolic feeding.  The groom is seated and the bride kneels before him and feeds him a piece of cake and gives him a drink of water.  He does something similar for her.  There's also the presentation of one of the round wedding cakes to the father of the bride and another to the father of the groom and another to the leaders of the congregation - each of whom take the cakes home (or as we did in the congregation - serve them after Sunday worship). I understand if they hadn't cut into the fourth round cake it would have been presented to someone else as well. For serving the cake to the guests at the reception, the bride takes a plate with sliced cake on it and walks around to everyone on her side - each person takes a small piece of cake as she serves.  ~presenting a cake to the family~ The groom does the same on his side. Then the bride takes cake over to the groom's side and the groom takes cake over to the bride's side. So you get two small pieces of cake served to you - which was rather unsatisfying after watching Krista work so hard on that cake for so long and tasting those two little bites knowing that it was so yummy.  I wanted a huge slice and seconds!

At one point in the reception, the bride and groom disappear with the wedding party and change clothes. They do that slow ceremonial walk out and then back. There's a time of gift-giving where the guests walk up to the bride and groom in front of everyone and hand them a wrapped gift. I was asked to come and walk with a group of the Kampala congregation church leaders to present a gift to the bride and groom as well. The presents are wrapped in really shiny reflective paper with lots of bows and ribbons. ~dinner~ There was a dinner served with all the great traditional food: rice, matoke (cooking banana), fried chicken, chapati (Indian flat-bread), beef in a broth, greens, groundnut (peanut) sauce, and baked beans along with your choice of pop or water.  Finally, there is dancing and the bride and groom dance with each other. It's the most physical contact I've ever seen between a couple here in Uganda. And they weren't slow-dancing or anything like that but just holding hands and dancing with each other. But only for a couple songs. Then other people joined in and it became more of a large group all dancing together.

Usually weddings remind me so much of my own that I get all teary-eyed. But this church wedding in Uganda was just different enough all around that I didn't cry - which is good since I was preaching! One final note: since so many of the congregation members came to the wedding on Saturday, we had a very, very small crowd at church on Sunday! Apparently going to church once in the weekend is enough for most folks! I'm sure part of the issue is that the money it takes to get to church on Sunday was used to come on Saturday so the transport money just wasn't available to return to church on Sunday.  I'm looking forward to celebrating at the traditional Introduction someday and I'll write a full report on that as well!  -Shauen