Wedding Committee

A few weeks ago, M came home and announced “we’re on Francis and Atsabina’s wedding committee!” I asked him what that meant and he just shrugged and said he wasn’t quite sure. Hmm, this was going to be interesting!

Over the next few weeks, Chris and Jamie filled us in on what to expect. First, being on the wedding committee involved a significant financial commitment. Second, we would be asked to do legwork leading up to the event and help on the day of the wedding. And, third, Kenya weddings are notoriously boring by American standards because the ratio of speeches to dancing is about 4 hours of speeches to 20 minutes of dancing.

Our first meeting was 3 weeks ago which we thought was rather close to the wedding on February 12th, but who were we to complain? Committees typically aren’t my favorite in the US, let alone in Kenya, so I was fine meeting only a few times. We were scheduled to meet at 1 PM on a Saturday, and M called me at noon to let me know that he was going to be late arriving from an errand to Mombasa and I should just go ahead and meet him there via matatu. “We could show up at 1:30 and still be the first people there, there is no way I’m going without you,” I told him. Sure enough, we arrived at 1:30 and waited until approximately 3 PM for things to get started.

Francis opened the meeting by thanking us and we quickly moved to the list of things still outstanding for wedding planning. These included transportation, DJ, crowd control, wedding program, and planning the entire extension party. We were informed that the extension party is very similar to an American reception and would include alcohol and dancing which would be conspicuously absent from the actual wedding.

Before we could begin meeting on these items, however, we needed to have committee officers. A chairperson, a vice-chair, a treasurer, and a secretary. Silence descended since it seemed that no one wanted to actually lead the committee. By previous agreement, M and I said nothing and attempted to blend into the wall. As you can imagine, this worked poorly but we escaped selection for officer positions since I’m pretty sure no one could remember our names.

First, we discussed crowd control. Kenyan weddings are community affairs and are considered open for anyone to attend. So, anyone walking by on the street may come in or other guests may invite people to join in the celebration. One committee member offered that he invited 350 people to his wedding and 760 people came. Francis and Atsabina’s wedding was planned to be slightly unusual though in that the reception was at one of the nice hotels on the beach and they had only paid for a certain number of guests. M and I threw out suggestions for using a card, invitation, or ticket to gain entry into the wedding and this was met with the comment, “Have you ever been to an African wedding?” So it was clear that RSVPing was out of the question for the committee because “you can’t just ask people if they’re coming to your wedding!” Oh, good to know! The bride and groom deferred to the committee on crowd control and we decided to table that for our next meeting.

Next up was the DJ situation and again, M and I were of no help since we don’t know any Kenyan DJs. Several names were thrown out and the final decision was tabled for the next meeting as well. Transport was next up and someone said they knew someone who rented cars in Mombasa, the committee as a whole seemed please with this finding and again further decisions were tabled until the next meeting. Are you sensing a theme here?

After about 3 hours of discussion, the meeting began to wind down. Everyone seemed satisfied with what had been accomplished so far though besides officer elections, we couldn’t discern any progress. We began to discuss where and when we would meet next and finally, M’s curiosity got the better of him and he piped up with “soooooo, does any of this stuff need to get done before the next meeting?” I nodded feeling that this was a valid concern given the wedding date in 3 weeks time but they assured us that we would be able to take care of everything at our next meeting in 10 days.

I admit that I was worried that we’d be assigned some task like “find a DJ” or “plan an extension party” with 10 days to go before the wedding so as I left I said to Francis, “we are so delighted to help with the wedding so if you could suggest something you think we can accomplish, we would be thrilled. We just don’t want to take on something that requires having contacts in Ukunda since we’re new in town.” He nodded and before he could say anything, I said “maybe the program?” He agreed that the program was the best thing so I felt slightly better that we had something we could capably handle.

The second meeting was much of the same, though some progress was been made in terms of a DJ, transportation, and the extension party. Also similarly, it was about three hours long.

At the third meeting, six days before the wedding, some roles were finally farmed out. I was appointed usher, as well as the prestigious honor of co-present table guard (along with M). M was also assigned to be a bouncer of sorts to keep the reception from being crashed by outsiders. He was supposed to identify and admit people from the lab, and several others were supposed to identify the other guests. This plan seemed to have a few holes in it, but we didn’t struggle against it too hard.

Francis came over a few days later with some wedding programs from weddings he had attended. We designed a simple program with sample graphics on the cover, the bridal party and the agenda on the inside, and then on the back we put some Bible verses as placeholders in a very similar fashion to the sample he provided. Since we didn’t know what verses they were using in their wedding, we just used the verses from our wedding (Psalm 100 and Colossians 3:12-14) as placeholders.

Me in designer mode:


As we got closer to the wedding, we kept asking them for edits or changes. They made a few spelling changes to people’s names but never suggested any new Bible verses. Finally with 3 days left before the wedding, M asked Francis what their verses were so we could print. “Oh, just use the ones you put on the program, those work for us”, he replied. We thought that was strange but figured they didn’t want to bother with that detail and besides they were just on the back of the program so most people wouldn’t see them. We dutifully printed and folded all 200 programs the night before the wedding on the scented paper (yes, scented) they provided for this purpose and arrived at 9:30 on Saturday for the wedding.



There’s so much to write about the actual wedding day, so you’ll have to watch for the conclusion.