Traditional Wedding

We got an invitation from one of my friends to attend her traditional wedding ceremony and her dress code was traditional clothing. The plan was to find my husband a kilt since he is of Irish and Scottish descent, but it didn’t make it on time, so we decided to have him wear west African attire.

Yesterday when I wore my mishanana (my traditional outfit) I was so proud and told myself I need to start wearing it at every wedding I am invited to just like how people do back home. They all pull out their imishanana and show up at a wedding or engagement party looking like queens and princesses.

When we had my husband’s outfit customized the plan was having him have different African attire since he already had imbega (male version of imishinana). I now need to get him the sandals.

The bride and groom looked amazing; they make a really cute couple! This was my husband’s very first time at a Congolese traditional wedding. He knows how it goes in my culture with the speeches going back and forth from the bride’s family asking the groom’s family what brought them to their house.

He then asked me how many cows are they going to bring? I explained him Congolese people don’t bring cows like we do. They do money, goats, kitenge and other presents.

When we were told it is time to eat, we went on with our plates and there were people serving us. My husband wanted to try a little bit of everything he has never had before. There was one of the food pans, it looked good according to what my husband told me and he asked to have a little bit of it.

When we got back to our table, he asked me what it was, and I told him those are caterpillars. He was shocked and said they looked like it and he just wanted to make sure. I then asked him did you ask before you got them? He said yeah and they told me it was peanut butter soup. He asked if I had ever eaten them and I said never. I told him since they are already on his plate he just might as well go ahead and try them, he then replied, “what my wife won’t eat I won’t eat, we are one”.

Then came the dancing part of the evening. Congolese people are known to party like rock stars, Congolese parties are always lit, and all of them know how to dance to their songs. You know how when someone was not born in their parent’s home country they may have hard time knowing how to dance their traditional dances? I have never witnessed that in a Congolese household, it doesn’t matter where you were born and grew up, they all know how to dance to their songs and it’s so beautiful.

One thing I can brag about my African people is you will never attend any African party and not have an amazing lifetime experience!