Ịgba Nkwụ: the wine carrying

At the centre of an Igbo wedding there is a moment when the whole crowd goes quiet and watches a woman walk through it carrying a cup of palm wine, looking for one particular man.

She has been given the cup by her father. She has to find her husband-to-be among hundreds of guests, and the guests do not make it easy. Men she does not know call out to her. Friends of the groom pretend to be him. Someone will try to take the cup. She ignores all of it, finds him, kneels, and offers him the wine. He drinks. He drops money into the cup. And with that, in the sight of both families and the entire community, she has chosen him.

That is ịgba nkwụ, the wine carrying, and it is the Igbo traditional marriage.

What has to happen first

The wine carrying is the last step of a process, not the first. It is preceded by two visits that most outsiders never see.

Ịkụ aka, knocking on the door. The groom's family, with his father or a senior uncle speaking for him, visits the bride's family to declare formally that their son has seen a flower in this compound and would like to pluck it. The bride's family does not answer yes or no on the day. They ask the daughter, in private, whether she knows this man and wants him. If she says yes, the families proceed.

The list and the bride price. The bride's family presents a list of what the groom's family should bring: kola nuts, palm wine, yams, wrappers and cloth, drinks for the elders, and a sum of money. Regions and families vary enormously in what the list contains and how seriously the money is negotiated. What does not vary is that the sum is symbolic. Nobody is buying anyone. It is a formal acknowledgement, between families, of what the bride's family has given in raising her, and a mark of how seriously the groom's family takes the marriage.

Only when the list is settled does a date get set for the wine carrying.

The day itself

It happens in the bride's family compound or a hall, in front of everyone: both extended families, the village, friends, often a few hundred people. It is loud, colourful and very long.

The bride's family wear matching cloth, aso ebi, and so do the groom's, so that you can tell at a glance who belongs to whom. The couple's own outfits are the most elaborate things in the room. Kola nut is broken and shared, and there are speeches from the elders of both sides that can run for some time.

Then the bride is called out. Her father hands her the cup of palm wine and sends her into the crowd. The search is theatre: everyone knows where the groom is, but the game is to make her work for it, and for her to show, in front of every witness, that she knows exactly whom she came for. When she kneels and he drinks, the marriage is made. She leads him back to her father, who blesses them, and the couple's first dance sets off hours of dancing in which guests "spray" the pair with money, pressing notes onto their foreheads as they move.

Why wine, and why she carries it

Palm wine is the drink of every serious Igbo occasion, poured on the ground for the ancestors before it is poured for the living. Sharing a cup of it is a sealing act, the way a handshake or a signature is elsewhere.

Having the bride carry it, and choose whom to give it to, is the ceremony's way of making her consent visible. However the families have negotiated, in the end it is the woman who walks through the crowd and decides where the cup goes. Everybody watching is a witness to that.

The families arrange the marriage. The bride makes it.

Feeding a wedding

An Igbo wedding is judged, very publicly, on its food, and the groom's family is expected to provide a great deal of it. This is the occasion the biggest pots exist for.

Jollof and fried rice by the tray, with fried plantain. Soup by the pot, at least two kinds so that no side of the family feels slighted, with pounded yam and other swallow to match. Nkwobi and isi ewu for the elders. Peppered meat and suya circulating with the drinks. Palm wine, obviously, alongside everything else, and enough kola to break at every table.

The quantities are large and the timing matters, because guests arrive in waves and the food has to hold up for hours. If you are planning one and have not done it before, our quantities guide will keep you out of trouble.

Read next: Iri Ji, the festival of the new yam.