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UAE wedding - Honouring tradition

Global Arab Network - - Maha Karim

Friday, 07 August 2009 23:42

The pace of life in the Emirates has seen many aspects of the old way of life struggle to keep up. But with their weddings the young generation are keeping in touch with history, albeit with a bit more bling. Jessica Hume attends a ceremony in Al Ain.

It’s about 10.30pm and the guests in the women’s party are getting restive. They have been pouring into the main hall for the past few hours and now they want to see the bride, and more importantly, The Dress.

“This is a traditional Emirati wedding, very traditional,” explains a cousin of the groom. “Many people in the UAE are moving away from tradition. In Al Ain we keep it more, because it is part of our identity.”

Unlike the country’s two largest cities, Al Ain has made a conscious decision to rein in the rate at which it grows. Staying true to its roots is more important than breakneck development. The party is the final of the three stages of a traditional Emirati wedding, and it’s about seeing and being seen.

The 23-year-old sister of the bride wears an aquamarine and hot pink gown, with make-up to match. The curls in her hair have been sprayed into place and her diamanté headband pinned on.

“This is Emirati make-up,” she says. “We do this for weddings and other celebrations. It took one hour for hair and make-up. My dress is from Dubai, Dh7,000. It is custom made. And the make-up had to match the dress, of course. That was important.”

After hours of anticipation, the bride finally emerges, accompanied down the aisle by two helpers. Her hair and make-up are immaculate. Her gown is magnificent. The bodice on her dress sparkles with sequins, the skirt is covered with white tulle roses. Her jewellery, bought for the wedding, catches the spotlights with every step down the aisle, where she will wait to meet her new husband.

“This is a happy day, of course, but there’s too much pressure,” says 19-year-old Salma, a friend of the bride since childhood. “After this day it’s a new life. She’s afraid; what’s it going to be like? When this day is over, trust me, she will be relieved.”

Salma wants a traditional wedding like this one, though she has no plans to marry just yet. (“No way! I want to finish my studies, I want to learn. I want a life!”).

At the table behind us, older women in burkas sit among young women in extravagant gowns showing plunging cleavage.

“There’s tension between old and new, it’s true,” Salma admits. The more women are educated, the more they want out of life. Conservative parents are less understanding when their daughters would prefer to finish their degrees before marriage, when they want to be educated abroad.

“I am lucky, my father understands, he graduated in the US,” she adds. “All the people here have been studying more, women have more options than before, they don’t just have to get married and have children. But still, these options weren’t there 40 years ago. So there’s tension, yeah. And pressure too, lots of pressure.”

I had met the bride two days earlier, along with her best friend, 19-year-old Roada, who provided an effervescent, opinionated foil to the bride’s shyness.

“Right now she can’t decide how she feels,” Roada explained, adding that she simply didn’t know what to expect from the wedding or married life.

“You think she is young to get married,” she continued, “because you are Canadian. People in your country get married when they are, what, 30?”

I nodded.

“She is 20 and getting married. But our mothers were 13 when they got married. So in our culture, women are marrying older now than the last generation.”

The men’s party is a smaller, shorter affair than that of the women. Dancing, singing and congratulations take up most of the evening. As the men sway back and forth, singing to the accompaniment of drums, I talk to Nasser al Hashemi, 35, a friend of the groom.

“Everyone knows the words to this song – it’s a Gulf thing. It’s for celebrations – weddings, birthdays, National Day.”

There are traditional elements to this wedding, he explains, more than some of the other Emirati weddings he has attended – but 50 years ago you wouldn’t see a wedding like this. The dances, the songs, the dishes served at dinner, the separation of men and women, these are all elements of the traditional Emirati wedding. But the extravagance, the bling, these are evidence of what he sees as blending of the new and old. He is not complaining, merely pointing out that traditions are waning.

“The internet, television, things like this are making people forget about tradition,” he says. “This is wrong. This is our history.”

As his bride is walking down the aisle, the 28-year-old groom waits to do the same. He admits he has been nervous.

“I had a bad dream last night – just about things going wrong,” he says. “It just happens when you’re nervous.”

He has spent the past few days looking after “the details” – buying things for the room in the family villa he will now share with his wife, making sure “everything is perfect”. Traditional weddings, he sighs, are so expensive, but important, not just to him, but to his bride, his family and Al Ain.

“It’s very good to keep the tradition. Maybe in 20 years people won’t be doing it any more. And if you lose your tradition, you lose yourself. If you lose yourself, how can you say where you are from? To be Emirati, that is something you feel inside. It gives us a sense of prestige.

“I could only marry an Emirati woman. From my experience, an American, an English girl, how could they accept me? You think they would want to live with me and my family? Wear hijab? No. It had to be an Emirati woman.”

Though he is not sure what to expect from this union, what’s most important is that he and his wife become friends. He wants her to work, for example, if that’s what she wants. He would be proud of her. “That salary would be all for her, that’s good, good for her.”

He knows she’s nervous, but has a plan for their first meeting as man and wife. “I will make her laugh. That will make her relax, I hope.”

Once his wife has reached the end of the aisle, she is greeted by other young women who congratulate her, having put their abayas and shailas back on in anticipation of the groom’s arrival.

But just before her groom arrives, women begin to leave the party by the dozen.

“We aren’t here for him. We’re here for her,” a guest explains. “We saw her. Now we leave.”

The groom is the only man who enters the women’s party. After walking down the aisle and sitting next to her, he begins his challenge of making the bride laugh. But there is no laughing, only demure smiles and failed attempts at eye contact.

“My wedding was like this,” explains a young woman, a cousin of the groom. “The bride is nervous, yes, but it’s OK. It will take time. It took me a month to feel it was all OK with my husband.”

Midnight has come and gone and the wedding is drawing to a close. The bride and groom make their way down the aisle to be photographed.

A line of 4x4s sits outside the building, husbands waiting for their wives to emerge. Inside, the only evidence that anything has gone on are the piles of rice on tablecloths, half-drunk glasses of juice and rogue sparkles that have escaped from faces and gowns.

Global Arab Network

Jessica Hume, this article originally appeared in The NationalMagazin (August 07. 2009).

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