A Wedding, Nica Style

As you may or may not remember, there is a former volunteer who lives about 20 km away from me. Sarah left Peace Corps but she stayed in the country to teach in another school near Managua and this past weekend she got married to her boyfriend (now husband), Moises.




You may be thinking “woah, PC volunteer marrying a Nicaraguan!?! Craziness!” but it actually happens a whole lot – more often with female volunteers marrying Nicaraguan guys but it can go the other way too. Seeing the direction the rest of our TEFL group is headed in, I kind of doubt that anyone else will be taking the plunge before we leave.

I digress.



Six of us volunteers attended the wedding, and we weren’t really sure what to expect. Sarah’s parents and a group of friends flew down for the festivities but it was largely a Nicaraguan affair. First off, it started a half hour late :) All the gringos were firmly in their seats but the Nica’s kinda just rolled in whenever so although we started with a half empty church, it ended closer to full. There were also about a zillion screaming babies.



The actual service was what surprised me the most. It started out much like any religious wedding, but in the middle of it the pastor stepped down and a lady in a suit stepped up and took care of the civil part of the wedding. This involved reading off the full names, ages, professions, and birth places of the bride and groom and having them along with their witnesses sign some paperwork. When that was over we got back into the religious stuff and finished with the usual kiss. We all thoroughly enjoyed the part where the pastor was trying to pronounce English stuff and would make his attempt and then follow it with “algo asi” (something like that).



Then there was the reception with food and the best cake I’ve eaten in Nicaragua (Nica cake is different from American cake- especially the frosting which just doesn’t taste right and they put something between the two layers of cake that looks like it might be tasty but usually it’s not – the first time we got Nica cake during training everyone’s eyes lit up but that only lasted until the first bite when we realized that it’s not what we were expecting). Then my friend Maria caught the bouquet, the second one she’s caught in Nicaragua thus far:



Overall, really not that different from a wedding in the U.S. except for the civil part.