wedding in Ethiopia.

We had family wedding ceremony this Sunday. The bride and bridegroom are from Colorado. However, both their family and work is in Madison that’s reason they decided to live in Wisconsin especially in Madison. The wedding ceremony happens to be a typical Ethiopian cultural or traditional wedding. About 400 people invited and most of the people did show up. The cultural Ethiopian wedding has some special steps. To give some information about Ethiopian wedding process let me start from the beginning. According to tradition and culture, the bride must be virgin in sense bridegroom expected to be a virgin as well but bride must be virgin when the marriage takes place. Because the bride virginity is highly valued and pride in Christian marriage, with the whole family being shamed if the bride is not virgin at marriage. Rural women, in particular, tend to marry at a very young age than their husbands but most part it’s replaced by modern way of marriage. In the past, it used to be the norm for the bridegroom to be 30 years of age when getting married following the biblical example of Christ who waited until he was 30 years of age before beginning his public ministry. Traditionally the groom's parents search for a bride for their son. Before they make any contact with the bride's parents they investigate to make sure that the families are not related by blood. In the past, they researched back seven generations, but now five generations are acceptable. Ethiopia is a multicultural country with 83 different languages and cultures that make Ethiopia most diverse and attractive place to live. This wedding belongs to wolayta tribe which located southern part of Ethiopia with beautiful and most popular music melody and traditional dance. The ceremony started at Lutheran church in then headed to Middleton Park the main ceremony taken place. Great weekend!