MARRIAGE PROCEDURES IN YORUBA CULTURE

The Yorubas are scattered all over the Diasporas, they however originated from the south-western Nigeria of the four major sociolinguistic groups in the country. The others are the Igbo; they reside in the eastern part, the Hausa and the Fulani to the northern side of the country.

The wedding ceremony is the last event that rounds off the relationship between prospective couple. As soon as a young man identifies the woman he wishes to marry, he and his peers cunningly find a way to make the girl know about his feeling towards her.

Once they communicate and confess their love for each other, they can then eliminate the service of an alarina (a person who helps lovers carries love messages for lovers). The girl naturally don’t tell her parents about her relationship with a man, it is the man who tells his parents, his parents will then take few of their relatives to the girl’s parents. Once the girl’s parents give consent to the relationship, the wedding date may be set.

Before the wedding the girl’s family will tell the man’s family what the pride price will look like. Usually the bride price consists of sugar or sugar cane, a number of tubers of yam, kola nut, bitter nut etc. As soon as the bride price is taken by the girl’s parents, the wedding day is fixed. Mostly, it is the husband side that chooses the date of the wedding.

The wedding day is the day of merriment, the day of dancing, eating, drinking, and rite performing for the parents of the couple, their friends, relatives and sometimes foes. The marriage however, goes beyond the union of the couple, it is indeed the union of the families of the couples that is why a Yoruba culture says “You don’t only marry your spouse you marry him/her along with the in-law.” During this period both families are introduced to one another.

The groom during the ceremony is compelled to come with some of his friends to portrait and ask the bride’s parent for their daughter’s hand in marriage, if they oblige them, they hand the bride over to them.

The couple are dressed in native attire, the groom is embellish with agbada, buba and sokoto while, the bride is adorn with iro, buba and gele (head gear).

The girl on the other hand, is escorted by her friend and relatives to her new home. When she gets to the door step, there is always a prayer session where water is used to wash the bride’s feet, this done to wash away any bad luck she might be bringing into the husband’s house away.

Before she is finally ushered into her husband house, she is given a calabash to slam on the floor; it is believed that the numbers of the pieces of the broken calabash is the number of children she will give birth to.

Finally, her husband is expected to make love to her the wedding night and he is expected to meet her virgin. If she is not, she and her parent are disgrace or sent out of the village the live.