Memories of last year’s weddings came flooding back when I heard that one of the happy young couples have just had their first child, a daughter Elodie, on New Year’s Eve.
Hannah and Mauro are the new mum and dad. We’ve known Hannah since she was five. She was a neighbour all those years ago, and Hannah and our Libby have been close friends since the 1980s. In fact, Libby was Hannah’s maid of honour.
Their wedding was in Canberra’s Weston Park—a place where our families spent many memorable times.
Over the years, Hannah has spent lots of time at our house. That said, I won’t embarrass her by posting a pic of her with our girls in our pink bathtub so many years ago (maybe another time).
Hannah is a clever girl and a not-too-picky eater.
I remember inviting her to dinner on many occasions. What are you having, she’d ask. Lasagne, I’d say. I’ll just check what mum’s making, she’d say. And within a few minutes she’d be back to say she was eating with us because her mum was serving spinach. Little did Hannah know that my lasagne had more than a half a pound of fresh baby spinach in it. I think that’s how she learned to like spinach.
But I digress. Back to our year of weddings and, no, neither of my kids got married this year.
Last month I was in the USA for a family wedding—my nephew, Charlie, married another Hannah. Charlie and Hannah attend university in Oklahoma, but they got married in St Louis Missouri, which is near Hannah’s hometown.
The wedding night was great. Charlie was so enthusiastic that he said I do about two sentences after the celebrant (his brother-in-law) started to speak. Got a great laugh from the crowd.
I didn’t take as many pictures as I’d have liked but here are a few.
In the middle of the year, we were spectators at a couple of weddings in Central Asia. The ones that stand out were in Khiva and Tashkent in Uzbekistan. Can’t find the pics from the those weddings, so will have to add those someday in future.
But the knockout, mind-boggling wedding of our year was in September in Papua New Guinea. I’ve already introduced our time in the Asaro village in PNG’s highlands but I haven’t told you about the mock wedding they held on our behalf.
It gave such wonderful insight to the customs and culture of just one of PNG’s many tribes. And it gave us plenty of great photo opportunities and lots of amazing food.
The young couple, both teenagers, were no doubt strong-armed by their families into playing their parts for the nice foreign guests.
Two young people roped into the mock wedding, with their stand-in ‘parents’
They did a fine job.
We were part of the groom’s entourage. And step one was to go along and offer a bride price. It’s not really so much to ‘purchase’ a bride, but for the bride’s family to recoup some of the money they lay out to prepare her for betrothal.
The village headman told me that when his daughter reaches a marrying age (gets her period, I suppose), he will seclude her for two weeks, and slaughter a pig every day to feed her and others.
Good grief, I love pork but I don’t think I could eat it for 14 days in a row.
Anyway, our mock bride didn’t have to do that, but the bride’s and groom’s families came together in the centre of the village to negotiate the ‘marriage price’. One negotiation was the night before and another followed the next day.
The bride’s family drove a hard bargain and our groom ‘paid’ six pigs and a whack of PNG money. In return, the bride’s family prepared a mumu (a feast of roast pig). The groom’s family prepared chickens (chooks) and veggies.
Retrieving the vegetables from the pit
The pig was led up the hill to be slaughtered and the process wasn’t that bad. The pig slayer came along and bonked the pig on the head. Truly knocked it out with one blow. And then slit its throat.
The pig was then cooked in a pit lined with hot stones. It took hours and hours. So did the cooking of the groom’s contributions.
I felt bad that a pig was slaughtered on our behalf, but it really was part of helping us to understand the local culture and customs.
Interestingly, the best bits of the pork (especially the crackling) were given to the groom’s family by the bride’s family.
One of the most interesting aspects was seeing the groom being decorated for the occasion. The bride got the same treatment, but we weren’t party to that. That’s because our group was divided in two and half spent the preparations with the groom and the other half with the bride.
