Write@Home
Winter 2015

Celebration

Beautiful table setting with wedding invitation on grunge background

Today I’m going to write a letter to show you how a traditional wedding ceremony is in my region in West Cameroon.

We celebrate a traditional wedding in three parts. The first one, we call it “knocks on the door”. For this part, the fiance comes with his parents, uncles, aunts and best friends. This step is to present the family and tell them “we want to marry your daughter”. They come with alcohol and a present and say who they are and what they want. The daughter's family gives them peanuts and beer. They are going to speak about the conditions they have to allow the fiancé to marry their daughter. At the end of this part, the daughter's family gives a list of everything they will have to do before coming back.

In the second part, the boy's family will do all the things from the list that they were asked. Generally, it is something like a gift for parents, grandparents, uncles, aunts, brothers, sisters and all the other family members.

The third one is the traditional wedding day. For that day, the boy's family is going to prepare all the gifts for the fiancé, give the money to the parents, it is going to be a party with a lot of games where the boy's family is going to spend a lot of money. The game I like is the one where they are supposed to introduce the bride to her husband. The first time the lady is going to bring another girl and the guys are going to say it is not her, they are going to ask for money to buy a ticket for a car or plane to go and find her. Sometimes they are going to say the car has a mechanic problem and they need more money to repair it, etc. Finally, when the finance is going to come to the room for the ceremony, the party is going to start.

This is how we celebrate a traditional wedding in my region.