Traditional Marriage Ceremony In My Tribe (Igba Nkwu)

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My tribe traditional marriage is usually very festive and colourful due to the outfits we wear to the ceremony.
But the Bride and Groom parents join hands together to arrange the traditional wedding, before the arrangements are made, both parents will run a background investigations into both families.

The traditional marriage process involves different stages before the bride and groom will go home happily together.

When the groom finds the beautiful lady he wants to marry, he will first inform his parent about the lady.
His parents and some family members will accompanied him to meet the future bride's family. Then both families will fix a date to meet.

During this first meeting, the future groom's father will state their intention for the visit.
The family of the bride will not give the father of the groom positive or negative answer right away that very. That's why they will then set another date to meet.
The families take this opportunity to carry out background investigations on each other to confirm if the families have good reputation in the society and good character. All of these are done before the next meeting.

On the next return to the future bride's home, the groom's parents will repeat their intention that their son wants to marry their beautiful daughter in question.
At this level, the bride's family are done with their investigations and has already spoken with their daughter concerning the marriage. On the return both families will summoned the future bride to be and asked if she agrees or she is interested in her future husband. If the bride agrees to marry the groom to be, this is when the bride's family will give the groom either positive or negative answer. The groom's parents will present some items to the bride's family during this next return, these items are native palm wine, native kolanut, local dry gin and soft drinks are included. Both the groom family and bride family will eat and drink. After this meeting, this is when they will set the main date for the actual traditional marriage which is known as “Igba Nkwu” in my language.

According to their customs and traditions, the bride's family will arrange a list of items that the groom's family will bring to the traditional wedding ceremony.
These are the things in the list according to tradition.

*Jar of palm wine

*2 goats

*Local dry gin (1 bottle)

*Tubers of yams

*wrappers

*Jewelry( for the mother)

*Cash (money)

*Native kolanut

All this items depend on the tradition of each community.
The first stage of the traditional wedding rite requires that the groom's family and villagers will take all these above items, and go to the future bride to be house.

The bride's family will prepare different kinds of native foods and dishes to entertain their guests families. There will be enough foods and drinks for both families and members of the community to eat, drink and dance happily.
While the ceremony is still going on, the bride will be given a glass of palm wine to give her husband, she will kneel down while doing that. The parents and elders of both families will pray for the newly couples for success of their traditional marriage.

After everything, the bride and groom will dance together with their family members. After the ceremony has ended, the groom will take the bride home this shows the two are now husband and wife.

This is how traditional marriage take place in my tribe.