Ugandan Weddings

Namirembe Cathedral is Weddings Central on a Saturday!  When I arrived there, one wedding was going on on inside the church and the next wedding party was milling around outside waiting for their turn.

 Here's the fleet of Mercedes wedding cars lined up outside

Young Ugandan women favor western-style dresses so the bride and her attendants looked much as an American bridal party would.  However the older women - mothers and aunts - were decked out in their best traditional gomesis (pronounced gombitz) of brightly patterned satin tied with a contrasting sash.

When I sat down to rest after climbing the steep cathedral steps, a lady from the wedding party in waiting wearing a gomesi and a silver-sequinned turban rushed up to me and asked if she could have her picture taken with me.  Her name is Lukiya Kagoya and she had come from Bugiri for her nephew's wedding.  All of a sudden everyone in the wedding party wanted their pictures with me!  You can see the different fashion styles in these pictures.

This is Lukiya Kagoya

This lady is Hanifa Akiali, also from Bugiri

This is Tracy Nolubanga - wearing western dress

And this is Zabiya Mutesi, also in more western-style dress.

Everyone wanted to exchange phone numbers and emails.  I wondered if having a white (muzungu) stranger at a wedding is supposed to bring good luck, and found out this morning how that works in practice - Lukiya called me to ask if I could help pay for treatment for her daughter, who has been admitted to Bugiri hospital with typhoid.  Sadly I'm not in a position to help - Bugiri is some 200km distant, close to the Kenyan border.

I've picked up a few more wedding facts while I've been here; typically the couple will book out a restaurant for the reception, and guests raise money for the couple by daring each other to do silly things (like standing on a table to sing a song), and passing a basket to collect the bets or the fee from the other guests for the dare.