Crazy Ghanaian Wedding!

On Sunday the 24th I got to attend a Ghanaian wedding. It really wasn’t what I expected! The invitation said the wedding was from 7:30-11 and then the reception was from 1-3, I couldn’t imagine a wedding being that long but then again being in Ghana everything is way longer than usual. When we pulled up to a building site at 8 I was a little confused, the building itself was a stone shell and there were piles of building material all around. When we got inside there were literally hundreds of people inside, we were quickly ushered up to the balcony seating area. It didn’t take us long to realize that we were in a church service and became even more confused! We thought that since we were late maybe we had missed it or maybe it would be the last hour or so of the church service. The service itself took us by complete shock! While they were praying the preacher would scream “face your sins” then everyone in the congregation would scream “face your sins”. And by scream…I mean SCREAM! Then he would scream “DIE” and the whole congregation would scream “DIE” then they would start shaking and “praying” really loud! So imagine being in a room of HUNDREDS of people while they are shaking and screaming at the top of their lungs…It was crazy! I figured if I was an unbeliever and this had been my first time to church I would have been scared to death…needless to say we were the only four people sitting in our chairs looking like everyone else had lost their minds! They probably thought we were all sinners that refused to face our sins lol. So none of us really listened to the sermon, we were all ready to get the heck out of there. . That quickly faded when the wedding finally started at 11:30. Once the wedding was over we greeted the new bride and groom and made a quick slip out of the parking lot by 1pm. The whole experience was def not something I would want to do again. However I don’t think that was normal even for a Ghanaian wedding. I have another wedding this coming Saturday so I am hoping it will be a better experience.