Ennie and Henry get married

Weddings can be exhausting and I was only taking the photos! Today, and many congratulations to them both, Ennie and Henry got married. Hooray! As Ennie is a good friend from Maz, and because I have bored her previously with loads of photos from my Zambian travels, she asked me to photograph her every move. 

It all began with me finding the ladies at the salon around 0800hrs, hair being straightened, curled, lengthened, make-up being added, and lips pursed. I then caught a few glimpses of them all getting dressed up before we headed to the church. The service was simple with plenty of big smiles emerging once it was all over. Next came the official posing of the wedding photos which took place in the gardens of one of Lusaka’s smarter hotels. After that it was a trip to the Civic Centre as more officialdom was required – signatures and a bizarre talk from the registrar who focused more on what the bride and groom should do if they should decide to separate or divorce and little on the anticipated joys of marriage. At last everyone could relax and take it easy for a bit as the main members of the wedding party escaped to my house for some late lunch. The groom definitely needed a drink by this point. 

Last up was the main wedding reception in the evening which was being held in the grounds of the Zambia National Service; not army, not air force but something military which was almost a disaster for me. No one had realised that foreigners are not allowed on the base without written permission beforehand. Hence, the armed security at the gates refused me entry, even though they appeared to be doing little checking of the other guests. They are obviously so well trained that even at night they can tell the difference between someone from Zambia, Malawi, Angola and so on . . . you get my point. Anyway after calling to higher and higher officials, pleading from members of the wedding party, checking all my documents and convincing them that I was in fact the official wedding photographer I was let in under armed escort. And then closely watched for the next few hours. 

Parts of the reception were similar to back home, others interesting and different. The wedding cake was shared out – one layer each to the parents of the bride and groom, one kept for their first born child and one divided up for all the guests. Ennie and Henry also had to through a very public display of feeding each other chunks of the wedding cake, followed by another first kiss (the third one I think after the church and civic centre). Then it was all over, sometime around 2200hrs and as soon as the happy couple left so did everyone else.