Matrimony Omani Style

During my nine-day long vacation from classes that was given to us in celebration of Eid al-Fitr Ahmed’s 15-year old niece got married and I was fortunate enough to attend the wedding. Weddings in Oman are typically three days long and my home stay family and I went to the second day. I am not particularly sure on the goings on of every detail of the full three days of the wedding but I will do my very best to describe my experience.

Couple of guys relaxing after dinner

     The first day of the event, I believe, is a ceremony, the second day is the party, which the bride’s family and the groom’s family have separately and the third day is when the bride’s entire family takes her to the village of the groom to “give her away”. As previously mentioned we attended the second day of the wedding and this was an interesting affair. Being that it is Ahmed’s niece that was the blushing bride to be we were present at the bride’s party and it was absolutely a party for the women. Upon arrival to the small village in the interior of Oman I noticed that the men and the women were mostly separated. The house was crowded with people, mostly women, filtering in and out and there was a large party tent set up outside in the yard. The women were not in their traditional public dress of a black Ibaya and Hijaab. They were dressed in extravagant and colorful Omani dresses, and were not interested in socializing with any men let alone getting their picture taken by a foreign one so all I saw of them was when they were walking to and from the party tent. This was no surprise to me, though, because I was finally getting the full picture of the degree of modesty demonstrated by the women here in Oman. 

The dj was a man so he had to do his thing outside the tent

     After most of the women had filtered into the tent the men who were there sat down on an assortment of carpets outside of the house and ate dinner, which consisted of meat and rice. When dinner was finished some of the men cleaned up the plates and others sat, conversed and drank coffee for the remainder of the time I was there. While all of us men were sitting outside we could easily hear the loud thumping music of the bride’s party tent.  When describing the experience later to some of my peers I likened the experience to a 8^th grade dance, being that all of the girls were inside dancing and having fun and all of the guys were hanging out outside, most likely wishing they were on the inside. This is of course a ridiculous comparison, being that in Oman, this was a long tradition of wedding protocol, but it was still a funny thought.

      The experience for me was extremely valuable in that it gave me a chance to converse one on one with a bunch of Ahmed’s brothers and cousins who spoke no English at all. After two hours of this my head hurt but speaking the Arabic language as well as getting to witness, first hand, a large part of Omani culture was an extremely positive one.