Friday, September 5th -- Aaron and Jeanne's Wedding Day

Today is the big day, Aaron's wedding day! I can't tell you how excited Si and I are to be here in Africa, but especially because Aaron is getting married.

We woke up about 10:00 to find Aaron is the only one home. Lyn, Patti and Don have gone with Fatime to do some shopping. Lyn was looking for some fabric to buy, to take to the tailor to have some clothes made for her husband and son. They came back with fresh bread, cold cuts, and some cheese for us to eat before leaving for the wedding. About the time we all finished eating, Chris and Jerry arrived from the hotel (they opted for a hotel instead of staying with all of us).






Aaron doesn't have very many occasions to wear a tie, so Si helped him out by tying the tie for him.






Then Si helped him put the tie on and make sure it was straight.













At about 2:45 we leave the apartment to walk to, for lack of a better word, the courthouse. Its about a block from the apartment. As we walk, I'm trying to surreptiousously take some pictures of people and things on the street. Its deemed very impolite to just take your camera out and start snapping pictures, but there were a couple of unusual sights I was trying to get pictures of --- the cattle walking down the street (no, that's not them to the right of this -ahahahahahahahha), the crowded buses, the watermelon stand. Everything was so unusual and unique. It was really interesting. Unfortunately, most of the pics I tried to take this way didn't turn out very well.

When we get to the courthouse, we go in and go upstairs to await Jeanne's arrival.








Here comes the bride.












Everyone is ready and waiting for the "ceremony" to begin. Aaron and Jeanne have to give the guy (on the right in the next picture) all of their pertinent information, name, where they were born, who their witnesses are, etc and he writes it all down in this huge book. Once he is done, the "officiant" begins. He basically reads the ceremony from the book, with all the blanks now filled in with Aaron and Jeanne's information



The ceremony is all in French. And, at the end of it the "officiant" says the only English he knows is, "Ladies and Gentlemen." Pretty funny and got a laugh from all of us. He tells Aaron to translate for us, and from the sounds of it, its your basic civil wedding ceremony. Aaron, do you?
Jeanne, do you?, You may now kiss the bride. And a little bit extra added. But it was exciting being there and to be a part of Aaron and Jeanne's day! Unfortunately, Jeanne's family is driving in from Thies and they didn't make it in time for this part of the ceremony.
Once the ceremony is over, we take a bunch of pictures and then get in the van to head for the religious ceremony at the church.

To be continued................

Since I figured out how to make the pictures a little bigger in my blog, I'm only including a few of the pictures we have. For a look at all of the wedding pictures that Ricci took, use the link below.

http://riccimedia.smugmug.com/gallery/5922145_jiW74#P-1-16