Wedding gone wrong: Drama that goes down at Kenyan weddings and honeymoons

Folks, we are in the last months of the year when weddings are commonplace. Contrary to popular belief, weddings are not rosy affairs — where everything goes on perfectly as planned. On-time, mishap-free and perfect weddings only happen in soap operas and movies.

In the movies, newly-married couples — giggly and all smiles — always jump into a car with a “just married” banner, leaving everyone green with envy. It’s always assumed the two love birds are headed to an idealistic paradise for their honeymoon where love will be so intense that the bride will return pregnant!

But in real life and behind the veneer of glamour, pomp and colour, weddings are actually — oops! — a farce. Besides the now-common cases of a jilted lover or concubine storming the venue and interrupting the exchange of vows, so many things normally go horribly wrong on this special day. Even the most meticulously planned nuptials are not immune to some of these embarrassing incidents.

Mother stealing the show

First off, there is the small matter of some parents turning themselves into nuisances and ruining the day. A tale is told of a well-known dramatic and pompous woman who not only caused drama, but also stole the show at her daughter’s wedding.

Keen not to ‘stoop so low’, the grandiose mother-in-law turned down a ride in a Pajero that had been reserved for her trip to the reception, and demanded to ride in the special limo that had been set aside for the bride and her maid of honour.

To save face and avoid embarrassment, panic-stricken wedding organisers had to quickly make adjustments. The aging drama queen was not done yet. Upon arriving at the reception, being the high-profile senior citizen and prima donna that she is, she took the game a notch higher and further stole the show when her bodyguard was seen closely manning her, attracting unnecessary attention in the process.

What’s more, she caused paparazzi to fall over themselves, trying to take the best shots of her bulbous and bulgy headgear, which turned out to be a bigger story than the wedding itself! Talk of a mother stealing her daughter’s limelight!

Embarrassing speeches

At yet another recent wedding reception in Nairobi’s Karen estate, the mother of the groom (suspected to be a mama’s boy), launched into a very long and boring speech, embarrassing the young man in the process.

For close to 45 minutes, the mother bored guests with long-winded tales of how it was such a bother and Herculean task bringing up and educating the groom. But there were some flashes of comedic genius.

“Heh, I tell you, of all my children, Tom was a special case. He had this bad habit of peeing and crapping on himself when angry. He also had a habit of not flushing the loo or wiping his bottom while growing up,” said the mother-in-law while giving a speech on the groom’s history.

She went on to spill more beans, saying he never used to like brushing teeth and had it not been her strictness, the groom wouldn’t have turned out well.

“Hehe! We hope he has changed and will not give this young, pretty woman a nightmare,” she said cheekily, leaving the congregation in stitches. Meanwhile, the embarrassed groom could be seen uncomfortably squirming in his seat, holding himself back from yelling, “Shut up, Mum!”

Much as this might have been passed off as a joke and much-needed comic relief at such a tense moment, who knows, the bride might have taken it so seriously and completely changed the way he looked at the groom.

Father got drunk and stripped

A certain Grace recalls, with embarrassment, how her stepfather got so drunk on her wedding day three years ago that he just could not handle himself.

“He got high and forgot himself. He ripped off his shirt and began dancing bare-chested, whilst making some weird moves, scandalising family members,” says Grace, adding: “He not only turned himself into a laughing stock, he disgraced us. Family members had nowhere to hide their faces”.

A man surnamed Okwach says he never enjoyed the reception of his wedding and was at pains to explain later why he looked uptight, never danced nor wiggled his bottom proper as expected.

Groom with running stomach

“I ate bad food and developed a running stomach. I just couldn’t dance and act freely. Each time I tried to freely shake a leg, it felt like I was about to experience bowel moments,” says Fred.

He adds that he had to keep squirming and holding his stomach in to restrict his bowels, lest he soiled himself.

You can only imagine how dramatic it would have been, had be bolted away from the aisle at maximum speed to the nearest loo!

Bride who fainted during kiss

How about this bride that got a little bit too nervous that she fainted while being kissed as her wedding was being filmed for a local TV show? Or this garden wedding where it was so hot that everyone was literally melting? And to make matters worse, one of the groomsmen who had decorated his hair with some cheap dye began sweating profusely while dancing, with the black dye running down his face with the sweat?!

Acrimonious honeymoon

Sometimes, the honeymoon begins and ends in bitter acrimony between the bride and groom. The marriage is never consummated and sometimes, the fallout is so severe that love permanently dies.

Take, for instance, the newly-wedded couple that was headed to the US for their honeymoon. They clashed at their wedding reception, coldly ignored each other during the flight to the US, right through the honeymoon and back. Nothing happened.

Reason? During their wedding reception at a Nairobi club, the bride, who thought she was the only fish in the lake, was disgusted when her husband’s former girlfriend ‘accidentally’ fell into his arms while presenting her wedding gift.

Groom ‘accidentally’ pecked ex

In a reckless moment of passion, the groom forgot that he was at his own wedding and gave his ex a lavish peck that got everyone embarrassed. The enraged bride slapped the offensive intruder and bit her ear turning the whole party into a fuss. By the time the couple was escorted to the airport to start a new life, all was clearly not well.

With all the wedding shows on television, matrimony has turned into showbiz but the truth is that most of these weddings are a circus, just a show — candy for the eye after heavy editing. If only they were to show everything — gluttons who stash delicacies in handbags to carry home and all, they would make for great comedy.

Interesting to note also is the fact that by the wedding day, some brides and grooms are usually not on talking terms. Some only go on with the wedding to avoid embarrassing their relatives and friends, not to mention the massive resources poured into the fete. Many live to rue the day they decided to get married.

Busted cheating just before D-Day

A case in point is a female friend to this writer who wedded this past Friday in Mombasa, despite having caught her husband-to-be cheating two months ago. So furious was the lady that she went silent and only began talking to him — albeit reluctantly — a month ago.

“I just don’t know what to do. I feel like calling off this wedding, it’s just that I don’t know how my people will take it. He came to Nairobi (he lives and works in Mombasa) and slept with his ex-girlfriend before coming to my house. I saw the entire conversation about the sexual rendezvous on his phone, and I am so pissed off. I want nothing to do with that randy goat,” hissed the woman in an earlier conversation with this writer.

She nevertheless grudgingly married the man. As you read this, they are on honeymoon, but you can imagine how acrimonious it is.

Unconsummated marriages

Contrary to popular belief that a lot of wild ‘gland-to-gland’ combat goes on during the honeymoon or wedding night, nothing could be further from the truth. All the effort that goes into a wedding — from the committee, to tailoring clothes, finding the wedding cake and decorating the church, the hall and the cars  - is quite exhausting.

By the wedding day, everyone is tired, especially the bride and groom, and the last thing on their minds is consummating the marriage. This undue stress, when not contained, may cause a usually sensible bride or groom to behave a little out of character.

Night of terror for virgins

What’s more, the wedding night is normally a night of terror for virgins and inexperienced grooms. In fact, most of the time, wink wink, the marriage is never consummated. For others, the bride is stressed out and tired after the ceremony and nooky is the last thing she wants to hear.

Unbelievably, there are ‘overly religious’ women who stay months even years without consummating their marriages, never mind the passionate kisses they exchanged at their weddings, because they think it’s a sin.

But why else would a wedding night fail the consummation test? A bride who had not told the groom that she was pregnant started throwing up during the ceremony. She even threw up the cake. The wedding was halted temporarily as the groomsmen rushed the bride to the nearest hospital.

Results revealed that the bride was pregnant making the groom confused as according to her, she was a virgin and this was going to be her first night. Although the groom did not cancel the wedding, the bride kept throwing up and visiting the bathroom her entire wedding night.

At the risk of being labelled party-poopers, we put it to you that next time you see a wedding procession with decorated cars, remember many of these couples will have parted ways in six months.

Readers, if you didn’t know at least now you know; most weddings are a farce. Ever wondered why TV stations call them ‘wedding shows’?