Last weekend I went to my first Foreign Service wedding. I’ve been in over a decade, so I was due. A guy I work with married one of our local staffers, a mechanical engineer. In the position he’s in, he sometimes has to cover for our boss, who indirectly supervises the engineer position. Because of this, I, being HR, have to do some paperwork to make sure in those cases, we’d have someone else indirectly supervise the wife. (Hey, it’s the federal government – we create paperwork.) One of the questions in the paperwork is to make sure the American employee didn’t have any influence on the hiring of the spouse, because the paperwork is mostly done well before the spouse has a job. In this case, I was able to affirm that the American employee had no influence on his spouse’s job, because she’d been there 15 years before he ever arrived.
Not knowing what to expect from the wedding, I carpooled and
arrived maybe 20 minutes early. It was at 11 a.m. and I fully expected to be
home around 3 p.m. Nope, not even close. Although the wedding was (or at least
seemed) more American than Malagasy, it took forever and the reception was a
huge party that went on and on. I made it til 5 p.m., and, sadly, the cake came
after that. I really wanted some, but the reception was exhausting – as fun as
it was.
First, though, the ceremony: it took over two hours. It was
a joint English-Malagasy, with hymns and scripture readings in both languages. The
sermon, in Malagasy, turned out to be a full-blown one and the animated pastor
spoke for 30 minutes or longer. The Americans in the audience were so relieved once
it was done because it seemed downhill after that, but the next pastor got up
and said, “And now we must translate the sermon to English.” Oh, man.
The groom is a person who works in my section, and his
parents, brother and sister-in-law came. In Madagascar, they do three different
ceremonies for marriages and I think the family was pretty worn out. I knew he
had at least one brother but didn’t know at first how many family members had
come. (They’re from Texas.)
The ceremony seemed pretty American, with the marriage
procession coming down the aisles just as I’d expect. The brother and his wife
(I wasn’t sure at first if it was his wife or sister) came down, and then the bride’s
side and then the groom’s mom came down, accompanied by a man I assumed was a
brother. I remember thinking, “I wonder how many brothers there are and wow,
they sure do resemble each other.” And at that point I started wondering where
the groom was. The church was a small one with three sections, so there wasn’t
a center aisle. I couldn’t figure out where the groom would stand, but once the
ceremony got started, I forgot about looking for him and was just observing it
and enjoying the hymns.
After those were done, the main minister came up and read a
scripture, first in Malagasy and then in English. Then the second “brother”
came up and read another, also first in Malagasy. And I thought, “Wow, his
brother really must have rehearsed that – he’s doing great.” And then he
switched to English and I realized it was the groom! I’ve worked with him six
months and did not recognize him at all. The guy I work with had moppy hair, glasses
and about a two-week shadow. This guy had close-cropped hair, was clean shaven
and didn’t have glasses. I truly did not recognize him, and I wasn’t the only
one. (And later, I sent a picture to someone who’s left post and she texted
back said “THAT IS NOT HIM!”)
The wedding itself wound up after 1 p.m. or so, and the couple
I’d carpooled with and I agreed we’d hang around the reception for an hour or so
before bailing, but when we arrived at the venue (it was down the road and everyone
caravaned) it became obvious there’d be no way to duck out. There was a huge
outdoor area, complete with a photo booth, with drinks and snacks. And I truly
thought that was it until I went into the building to find the bathroom and I
discovered a huge room set up for a sit-down dinner.
It really was a lot of fun, but exhausting. The reception was in stages, with something happening, then some food, then more stuff, then more food. There was a lot of dancing and a lot of good fun. The couple had choreographed their first dance and, instead of a father-daughter dance there was a mother-son one, which they’d also choreographed. That one about brought me to tears because the groom was so close to crying. At one point, they were dancing close to our table, giving us a good look at his face. A friend at the table next to me grabbed me out of emotion and I looked at her, saying the groom was making me cry. She felt the same way.
