Friday, April 07, 2006
OUR LAWN BECOMES A FASHION PLACE
Our soccer field (lawn actually) was magically transformed one Friday evening and Saturday morning into a lovely setting for a wedding. In this photo you can see the main stand and cake display, but each side of the field had covered canopies for the guest to be out of the sun and they were decorated with red and white baloons - two of which you can just see on the upper right hand corner of the picture.
Here the bride and groom (she a local girl from down the road a ways here east of Accra and also east of Tema) (he the son of the former counsellor in the Area Presidency when we were here - Elder Opares son) and their party take their places on the platform - the wedding was scheduled for 8:30 AM and got under way a little after 9 - very good really for Africa - the ceremony (the official marriage) took place in the chapel, and then they came out here for the "reception" - which lasted about an hour and a half.
This is the fancy cake - I think they must have rented it along with the display table and all the canopy settings - there were 7 cakes of decreasing size all up and around the display you see here - extremely elegant and lovely. The reason I think they were rented is they never attempted to cut it or to eat any of it.
Here is the entire party all assembled just before they left for the temple in Accra where they were to be sealed in the temple - you would think you were at home almost with the coordinated dresses, the ring bearers, the flower girls, the elegant dress and men's attire. Sadly enough this is not the traditional and common place wedding - In Africa there are the three types of wedding: 1) tradtional - which involves the dowry and recognized exchange of gifts for brides 2) The official wedding - which requires government sanction - in Ghana now our Bishops are able to be recognized as offical agents for marriage without the sometimes extreme fees being paid to government officials. 3) Church blessing - this now is the sealing in the temple - before it was simply going through the church marriage ceremony in the chapel - neither are officially recognized by the government, but very much recognized by the church.# posted by Ghana Gazette @ 9:30 AM 
