I didn’t realise it explicitly at the time but my wedding was an intercultural affair since my mother is French and we invited several French relatives over to participate in the event. Thinking back so many years ago I don’t recall ever paying any attention to what the French participants would be expecting, still less thinking of accommodating them. I had attended a couple of French weddings myself so I knew that there wasn’t a great deal of difference except that in France the civil ceremony is compulsory so if you have a church wedding then there are two ceremonies. The only thing I do remember specifically is that I didn’t like the British tradition that the couple disappear after the wedding meal. It felt somehow like I was missing my own party, so we stayed, in the French way.
Fri Bailey contacted us at Absolutely Intercultural wondering if we might be interested in finding out more about her new business Wedding Nouveau. Fri is from Cameroon and experienced a greater clash of cultures when she married her West Coast American husband than I did when France and Britain wed. First they got married in Cameroon where the groom had to ask for Fri’s hand in marriage officially from her father and there were then a whole slew of ceremonies and traditions to be performed before the couple could be seen as married. Then the couple chose a neutral location for a second wedding ceremony on Hawaii. Fri’s parents could not attend but because they had been through the Cameroon experience they felt that they were not really missing out on anything important. Apparantly the two wedding approach is one chosen by many inter-cultural couples.
After her own experiences Fri Bailey decided to set up in business helping other intercultural couples organise their weddings, helping to make the process an easier joint celebration. The obvious approach would be to study the two traditions involved and somehow create a hybrid but Fri is an actor and artist by training so she has developed the process several steps further by devising what she calls her palette approach. This entails finding out about the couple as individuals as well as about their respective cultures so that the final plan is not just a mixture of cliches and stereotypes but instead is more personalised. You can hear much more about her approach in the latest Absolutely Intercultural show. This could be a very profitable avenue for Fri since the number of intercultural marriages is rising sharply in the USA.
Weddings were a good topic for the show since this was our 100th show and therefore rather special. To add to the special occasion we have been entered for the European Podcast Award both under Denmark and under Germany since the show is itself an intercultural marriage!