Life of a Flower Girl

Our house help’s daughter was married this past weekend and A Delight was one of the two flower girls in the wedding! We took time to get A Delight ready for the wedding with henna and braids in her hair. Henna is a very long experience, although positive for A Delight. Application takes about two hours, but then you have to let it dry and wash it off. Getting her hair braided always has some tears, but this time she started crying not even halfway through! It was a very emotional hour of braiding. In addition, we didn’t have much information about anything in preparation for the wedding. There was suppose to be some rehearsal, but if it happened, we were not notified. We also didn’t have A Delight’s dress until less than a minute before she was suppose to appear to walk in front of the bride.

Being involved in this wedding did give us some more up close experience at weddings here in Niger. The flower girl actually has a huge role in the wedding. It seems even bigger than the bridesmaids! A Delight was suppose to ride in the car with the bride and get out at the same time that she did. This is the time they popped her dress on and jumped her into the car. The two flower girls lead the bride and groom in; sat in the front; stood and danced when the bride, groom, maid of honor, and best man stood; led the bride and groom out; and greeted people coming through the line. She did great through all this, then she went with the wedding party to their special seats. Unfortunately, this is where we lost track of her and when we found her she was upset and feeling kind of alone and not knowing what was expected of her. We hung out with a small fraction of the guests to watch many of the western like wedding activities, while most of the guests were eating a sauce over rice. The bride and groom fed each other a piece of cake, which only a hand full of people ate (That some westerners friends had prepared, as cake is very uncommon here). They gave each other a drink of orange pop. The groom guessed the next groom by tapping him on the head with a ladle. The bride threw her bouquet. The word on the street is that the bride and family as well as the guests appreciated all the effort the ‘visitor’ (A Delight) did to prepare for the wedding and look so nice. Grateful the ‘tears’ were in some way noticed, but I often wonder what we are teaching our daughter – try to look pretty at any cost or pain?! For our family, the wedding was a very fun experience and far less painful (long) than we had thought it would be!

The bridesmaids were in royal blue, the highly invested family in aqua outfits,
and the cheaper family and friends in yellow & blue leafy fabric.

-- La Maestra