An Authentic Congolese Wedding – Truly an Unforgettable Experience

Thank you all for the kind comments on the travel posts. I’m so happy to hear you are enjoying them!

This post is all about why we went to Congo in the first place – the wedding!  I took quite a bit of video so I’ve had to condense that because it was simply too long. You know how that goes…

What a fun, fun experience the wedding was. I’ve never been to anything like it before so everything was fresh and exciting.  Remember: I was supposed to be all fixed up for this African wedding but my suitcase was lost, never to be seen again (even to this day) and so I was fortunate enough to have 1 dress outfit in my carry-on, complete with shoes. So I wasn’t super fancy and I wasn’t wearing bright colors but at least I didn’t have to wear my jean skirt either!

The wedding was to begin at 5pm but we didn’t arrive at the church until 5:10 and we had left the hotel before the father-of-the-bride who hadn’t even started getting ready!

People were standing in front of the church, along the street, visiting.

Some relatives of the brides family.

We didn’t know that things run on a different clock than we are used to. It’s called African time. And they must all know about it because almost no one was there. I was feeling bad for our host thinking, “Oh no, is nobody coming? He flew us 5 American’s over for his daughters wedding and yet not many will be coming locally. That will be really embarrassing for him.”

But slowly the people started filtering in and by 6pm when the wedding started there were almost 600 people there.

Before I post the video of the wedding, I want to show you a few other photos.

I was wondering if it would be okay to take pictures but it wasn’t a problem at all as you can see. You could hardly see the bride and groom for all the phones and tablets.

This little girl was all fixed up.

And here is the video of the wedding and reception. It’s 8 minutes long but I just couldn’t get it any shorter.

The main language in DR Congo is French so your communication is pretty limited with the majority of the people, so I’m not sure why these boys wanted their picture with Russell. But they did and the one in the scarf actually asked Russell if he was a dignitary because he thought he’d seen him on TV.

He never did believe Russell when he said he wasn’t!

 You also might be curious to know the timetable of everything.

The wedding was to begin at 5 but did not start till 6pm.

The wedding ceremony lasted 2 hours.

The bride and groom arrived at the reception right away but then disappeared and they, along with the groomsmen and bridesmaids did not reappear until 10pm dressed in completely different attire.

At 11pm, the food was served.

And we returned back to our hotel at 3am.

The majority had left but not all, so the reception was still going but winding down when we departed.

Volume

Did you know they like things loud? As in very, very loud.

Both the wedding and reception gives evidence to this.

You had no trouble hearing anything… except the person sitting next to you and then you had to YELL. My husband has a decibel reader on his tablet and it was reading at 120 decibels.

According to Noise Help your exposure to 120 decibels should only be for 7 seconds in a 24 hour period and at 112 decibels hearing damage can occur after only 1 minute.  We were a little odd in that we took pieces of tissue and wadded them up and placed them in our ears. Later in the evening we even offered some to the mother of the bride and SHE ACCEPTED. 🙂

It was a fantastic night. A once-in-a-lifetime experience and I loved it. I am so thankful to our generous hosts and those that were our guides and drivers while we were there. They were all amazing and treated you like you were the most important person in the world. It was quite a lesson in how to make others feel special and I’ll tell you more about that in my next post.