BY BETELHEM BEDLU
Abel Zewengel a professional photographer owns a wedding photo studio here in Addis Ababa. He has been teaching film making and media at Tom Film Production for about seven years. It has been almost eight years since he joined the business.
He said in his words that the job gives him pleasure and motivation to keep on working. For him, the very interesting thing about the job is seeing couples and their families’ excitement and happiness. Having to see their enthusiasm and eagerness to start new life is beyond words. Hence wedding season is the ideal time for him as he can enjoy the joy of the couples and the peak of his business at the same time.
However, the society needs to have an attitudinal change towards wedding and its ceremonies. The wrong and exaggerated attitude towards the ceremony and the subsequent large amount of budget to it has led many to go bankrupt, according to him.
“Due to the amount of expectation given to the ceremony, most people find it hard to take simple steps, spend less on the ceremony and use their budgets to build their family” he noted.
Noting that he had the chance to see most couples who organized a huge event but yet found themselves in trouble to even pay for their video and studio photos afterwards, he added that most of the couples had family influences and wanted to meet the society’s expectations.
Wanting to be surrounded by friends and families is not a bad way to set forth on a happy married life, nevertheless making the event simple is a wise decision. “I think that’s what the COVID -19 situation taught us”, he said.
But for decades or even centuries, wedding ceremonies in Ethiopia were known to be full of series of ceremonies that take weeks and even months. In addition to the time taken, they also incur a lot of expense.
For instance a booklet published by Ethiopian Tourism Commission on the eighth anniversary of the Ethiopian Revolution in 1974, entitled ‘Ethiopian Festivals’ aiming to inform the world of the major national tourist attractions and help Ethiopians know better about their country.
The small book portrayed the various cultural heritages and festivals of the nation such as sports, games, celebrations, occasions and pilgrimages. One of which was wedding ceremonies.
Volumes could be written and may well have been on the subject of marriage customs in Ethiopia. The variations seem endless and in direct contradiction to that statement, the similarities in many of the celebrations among otherwise dissimilar peoples are often quite surprising, according to the document.
The two main/common types of marriage have always been either by arrangement whereby either the bride’s father or his representatives negotiate a provision for bride wealth or dowry, or sometimes both families agree to make useful gifts to the young couple, or the young suitor agrees to make payments to the family of his intended, or marriage by “abduction” (illegal by now) which in most instances nowadays involves the mock carrying-off the girl, symbolic of former times when the capture was made in all seriousness.
As to the source, Church marriage, though it is not universal, almost all marriage are celebrated with a wedding feast and singing, dancing but the celebrations themselves vary quite a lot with each cultural group.
Where an oromo will gallop to running water on a horse with his bride, the lovely Harari brides remains seven days in a darkened room while each day a different symbolic food is served and there is a dancing and singing in the evening. Then her hair is especially dressed and done in a beaded net. She takes ‘Kosso’, a local medicine, to make her weak on her wedding night, and her nails are ceremonially cut so that she will not scratch the groom. The Turkan in southwest Ethiopia perhaps have some of the most colorful and elaborate ceremonies. Renowned for their skill in crafts, the wedding is a splendid excuse for elegant personal adornment, and the groom and his escort are resplendent in leopard skins and ostrich feathers and hung with silver jewelry. A ritual grove is the setting.
The Gurages go in for a successful “capture”, whereupon a bustle and activity begins for the preparation of grand feast with specially selected ensete-the false banana plant that fills most of the needs, dietary and otherwise, of these people-and specially brewed tella (local beer), new bread and fat cattle.
The betrothal period lasts for two or three years. Before the wedding, the boy builds a house and the girl sings and dances with her friends at night until she is so tired the best man has to look after her. He then becomes her ‘brother’ for life. She wears a new white dress and red scarf and stockings and rides away on her mule under a red umbrella. Her attendants carry her possessions towards her new home while the groom and his friends race their handsomely decorated horses across the sunlit plains.
Many of these celebrations take place quite near the capital city and are easily seen, and with a little tact can often be photographed.
The main seasons for weddings is the seven weeks after Timket (January 27, and no Christian marry during the fifty-six day Lenten fast before Easter. The preferred wedding day is Sunday (so that the deflowering does not take place on Lord’s Day), Muslims tend to have their weddings in the “off season”, during the rains when the work load is light, the source indicates.
Given the approaching of this wedding season, it is not surprising to see limousine and other decorated cars or hear their horn on the streets of Addis. Even though the ceremony could be arranged depending on the financial status of the soon to be newlyweds and families, it seems that the ceremony is becoming unaffordable for many.
Starting from renting the wedding gown to the halls and cars, let alone the foods and drinks, but the entire preparation process is hard to cover. Even with these situations, people still get married. Be it holding a small or big ceremony, they spent their happiest moments with their beloved ones and relatives.
It goes without saying that having the ceremony by itself is not a problem, the problem is with the excessive amount of expenditure that people put on to cover wedding expenses.
In this regard the cutting these lengthy ceremonies to only studios seems advisable. Those who wanted to move aside the huge expense has taken good advantage of the situation and got married with studio and field photos. If we look at the positive side of it, they have not lost anything.
Therefore, it is important to note that it is not the amount of money that we put on the event that makes the wedding long-lasting; it is the foundation which we make on other things such as finance etc.
THE ETHIOPIAN HERALD JANUARY 15/2021
