Anthony's and Sidonie's Marriage Day

The reason we all went to Abidjan was for the wedding of my friend and colleague Anthony Tanoh to Sidonie, his partner of 10 years. The concept of Ivoirian weddings are a bit different that the American theory. Most couples in Côte d’Ivoire don't go through any marriage process at all, and for most people this lasts for the entirety of their time together (which would become common law marruage in the States, but apparently there is no equivalent in Côte d’Ivoire). The decision to get married in Côte d’Ivoire comes after couples have been together for quite a while, and they usually have children. Getting married symbolises that the couple intends to stay together forever, separating is no longer on the table. While in theory this is also the idea of marriage in the States the fact that roughly 1/2 of marriages end in divorce tends to obviate the theory.

My favorite quotation about life in general (this is probably related to the work I have chosen to do in life) is attributed to Albert Einstein: "In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they are not." American marriage is theory, Ivoirian marriage is practice.

So our family went to Côte d’Ivoire to witness Anthony and Sidonie announce to society that they were going to stay together through thick and thin. Anthony and Sidonie had named their third child "Christophe," which we initially took to be more of less the equivalent of being named a godfather in American terms (an honor with few obligations), but which we learned is far more symbolic in Ivoirian culture. In essence the formal naming of a child after a friend in Côte d’Ivoire bonds the two families together for life. This became clear a few years ago when Christophe was born and, in both formal and non-formal settings, we began to meet more and more members of Anthony's extended family. In the picture below Anthony and Sidonie are getting ready to pose for wedding pictures, their 3 children (in descending age), Henri- known as "Junior", Yann, and Christophe are to Anthony's right (the flower girls in green dresses are all relatives, but not the children of Anthony and Sidonie).


The wedding day had 3 main components: a civil service overseen by the mayor of Cocody, Abidjan; a religious ceremony at an Episcopalian Church (Anthony's family are Protestants, Sidonie's family is Roman Catholic, the Protestant's won out); and a dinner reception for about 500 people on the grounds of the National Library. I will put together a brief movie of all of this for a future post, these pictures were taken off of the video footage. The above picture was taken on the banks of the Abidjan lagoon between the civil service and the religious service, the picture below of Stefan below was taken at the same time, he is doing his best Leo DeCaprio impersonation (I just watched a $1.50 bootleg copy of "Body of Lies" last night, I'm not kidding, check it out, he just needs a Brazilian Supermodel girlfriend). Brooks Brother suit compliments of a doting mother...


From here we went to the church, which thankfully had many ceiling fans, as spending a full day outdoors in Abidjan in a tie and suit was an idea that had never previously crossed my mind as something one might consider reasonable. Luckily, it was abnormally cool the week we were there. Here is a picture of Anthony and Sidonie at the front of the church during the middle of the ceremony.


From the Church we went to the dinner. Kathy and I had been the witnesses to the Civil Ceremony, two other friends were witnesses to the religious service, interestingly, each pair of witnesses got premier seating at the dinner. The two people we would consider "Best Man" and "Maid of Honor" sat out of sight behind the dais, their roles were much more support than honor. Below is a picture of our two boys at dinner, we were finally allowed to jettison our jackets, though I am proud to say that they sucked it up until I went first (I'm obviously a bit biased in my picture choices...).

I'm not sure that I've exactly covered the day, but I'm running out of gas and it is past dinnertime, so this is what you're getting for today. Best to all.