Afghan Wedding and their customs

mahool · February 19, 2014, 2:41am

Re: Afghan Wedding and their customs

One main difference between Pakistani and Afghan weddings is the engagement. In Afghan weddings, the engagement is almost as large as the wedding itself and involves all of the things you would need for a wedding, such as an elaborate dress, cake, flowers, and invitations. Engagements can have as many guests as a wedding. Usually both sides contribute to the cost of the engagement party but if the gentleman is more traditional, he covers the entire cost himself. Our engagement party was held at a country home in Yorkshire over a weekend and had about 300 or so guests as we had guests coming in from abroad (most of my family lives in Denmark) and my husband has a large family. How large or formal the engagement party varies though and depends on the prospective couple. At the engagement, the bride is presented with gifts (mainly jewellery) from family and close family friends. It’s usually at this point that she receives the engagement ring. However, as my husband had already given me the engagement ring when he proposed (and this was long before the engagement party), he presented me with a jewellery set, which I later wore on our wedding day.

The Nikah is also performed at the engagement party. The reasoning behind this is that, with the Nikah, the couple can freely interact with each other during the engagement period and the time leading up to the actual wedding. However, this can sometimes result in a bit of a problem. As the Nikah makes you husband and wife before God, you would have to obtain a legal/ religious divorce if the engagement is broken off. For this reason, people are beginning to wait and perform the Nikah on the actual day of the wedding reception. We had the Nikah performed at our engagement party as we were getting married in a rather short period of time anyway. The period between the engagement and actual wedding varies and can be short as a week or as long as a number of months depending on the couple.

Another key difference is wedding attire. The bride wears a green gown (this is usually traditional attire but can be western gown as well) with a green shawl for the Nikah and a white wedding gown for the wedding reception. As our Nikah was performed at our engagement party, I wore two different gowns: a deep green traditional outfit with gold and cream accents for the actual Nikah ceremony and a green western gown for the latter evening part of the engagement party. For the wedding, I wore a white wedding gown with lace detailing.

No Mehndi… No songs

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