When honeymoon nights turn cold

By Sophie Khakasa

In the movies, lights fade out when the newly married couple board a car with a ‘just married’ banner on the rear bumper.

It is assumed they are headed to an idealistic paradise for their honeymoon where love will be intense and hot and the bride will return pregnant.

But often times, the honeymoon begins and ends in bitter acrimony. The marriage is never consummated and sometimes, the fallout is so severe that love permanently dies.

At 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.

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.

A farce

With all the wedding shows on television, matrimony has turned into showbiz but the truth is that most of these weddings are a farce, just a show — candy for the eye.

By wedding day, most 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 why they didn’t cancel their weddings a day before. Others call old boyfriends and girlfriends saying, "Say yes, sweetheart, and I will call off this wedding…"

Besides, all these activities — from the wedding committees, to tailoring clothes, finding the wedding cake and decorating the church, the hall and the cars are quite exhausting. By wedding day, everyone is tired, especially the bride and groom and the last thing on their minds is sex.

This undue stress, when not contained, may cause a usually sensible bride or groom to behave a little out of character.

Only last week, a wedding ceremony in Kakamega turned sour, forcing the padre to revoke the marriage certificate. The couple disagreed at the reception. While waiting to cut the cake, the bride got a note from the master of ceremony that had been passed on by a member of the congregation.

After reading the note, the bride became visibly angry and pulled a long face as the ‘inspirational’ speeches wound on. But hell broke loose when the cake was cut.

As soon as the groom put a piece of cake in her mouth, she spat it out, shouting, "thu, thuthu thuthu thu!" before passing the note to the shocked pastor. Unimpressed by the crude bride’s behaviour, the man of God read the note quietly, furrowed his brow and asked everyone to go back to church.

Once in church, he took the rings away from the couple and declared the wedding dissolved.

Although both families insisted the couple was legally married and made them leave together for their honeymoon, they only ended up quarrelling the whole night instead of making love.

According to the note, the groom had allegedly spent the night at a girlfriend’ s house from where he headed straight to the church for his wedding!

For many wedding couples, it’s fatigue and fright that throw spanners in the works. The wedding night is normally a night of terror for virginal brides and inexperienced grooms. Most of the time, the marriage is never consummated. For others, the bride is stressed out and tired after the ceremony and the last thing she wants to hear is sex.

One of the things that make the bride and groom lose sexual interest in each other is the speeches that some family members and malicious relatives, especially aunties, carelessly churn out at the reception.

At a wedding reception at Stima Grounds in Nairobi, one of the groom’s relatives, while giving a speech on the groom’s history, told the congregation that he had this bad habit of never flashing the toilet or wiping his bottoms when he was growing up.

"We hope he has changed and will not give this young pretty woman a nightmare," she revealed cheekily as the congregation laughed.

Turned off

Although it passed off as a light joke, the bride took the matter seriously and was turned off. She would not let him touch her on the wedding night.

The other incident was a wedding where the bride’s mother not only removed her clothes while dancing at the reception but the bride’s father urinated on his son–in-law.

Apparently, the bride came from a family with mental disabilities but had kept this secret safe from the groom and his family. Although she had told the groom that both her parents were dead and her uncle and his wife would represent her family, a malicious relative in Kisii put her parents on the bus to Nairobi to attend the function.

The bride did not cancel the wedding but was put off by this whole incident. He failed to deliver on his wedding night, telling his wife, "I do not want to have mad children."

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.

In Nairobi, a 70-year-old man whose wife had died from a road accident remarried at a huge colourful ceremony attended by the ‘who is who’ in Kenya and beyond. But the night the couple travelled to the Seychelles for their honeymoon, the man’s knees and back started aching due to old age complications.

The bridegroom spent their week of honeymoon massaging the old man’s back with Vicks Vapour rub, washing and turning him over in bed.

But for some, it is money that denies them the pleasure of consummation that most couples dream of on their honeymoon.

Some brides, after receiving the marriage certificate, refuse to consummate the marriage until the man transfers property to them. One such bride frustrated the groom by mentioning a lawyer every time he wanted to consummate the marriage.

So the next time you see a wedding troupe with decorated cars, remember many of these couples will have parted ways in six months.

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

Yes, weddings are a farce. That is why TV stations rightfully call them "the wedding show"!