By Clare Muhindo
On this day last year (December 4), my husband and I held our last wedding preparatory meeting. Having started the meetings on November 4th with a mega launch that was attended by about 90 friends and family at Little Ritz Hotel at UMA show grounds, Lugogo, we held three other meetings on Wednesdays until December 4th.
Considering that we had had a huge turn up and raised a good sum of money during our launch, we believed that the same spirit would be shown to our weekly meetings. Far from it!
The first meeting was held on November 15th, about 10 days after the launch. It was scheduled to start at 5pm, but by 5.30pm, I was seated there with my fiancé, just the two of us, staring at empty plastic seats.
Call it a flop…
Time went by and we thought people were simply trapped in traffic jam, for some of them had promised to be there. At 6.00pm, we were joined by my younger brother, later my fiancé’s cousin, and our meeting chairperson… When these two joined us, we began to plan, as we made calls to different people who had promised to turn up.
By 7.00pm we were joined by two other friends, and proceeded with the meeting.
Wedding preparatory meetings are ideally supposed to help the couple plan for their wedding, for instance identify and allocate resources, among other things.
However today, the image is different. Many think these meetings are meant for begging for money. Some have even changed the name from wedding to begging meetings. It’s understandable… That is all that happens in Kampala wedding meetings. If you think I’m lying, go to Centenary Park on a Friday evening and you will notice so many auctioning ceremonies going on.
When it comes to the nitty-gritty of who will do what, how much will be deposited on what, when, where and how, the groom’s family normally takes charge.
So anyway, we held our first meeting, six of us and called it a day around 8pm… Click here to read more
