Marriage made simple

Michael Ngare, 24, and his 22-year-old fiancée had trouble getting their parents to approve of their marriage. Despite the two lovebirds being well over the legal marriage age of 18 years, their parents felt it was not yet time for the nuptials and stood in the way of a church wedding.

But the two had made up their minds. One day, they visited Sheria House, the Attorney-General’s office in Nairobi, where a legal wedding is conducted in under 10 minutes — and walked out man and wife.

“My wife’s parents and mine had refused to allow us to get married because they consider us very young. We figured out that this is our life and that no one felt the way we did. We raised Sh8,500 for the rings, Sh1,550 for the statutory fee and a further Sh3,000 for entertaining a few friends in the evening and that was it,” Ngare said in an interview with Lifestyle this week.

“We still plan to visit our parents some day. Hopefully they will understand us,” he said.

Fast catching on

Church weddings and traditional bride-price-paying parties — often characterised by elaborate planning and ceremonies — may still be the most common ways of solemnising marriages in Kenya. But statistics from the Registrar of Marriages show civil unions are fast catching on.

This year, the number of marriages registered by the office has already exceeded that recorded during the same period last year by 228.

“From January to May 2008, our office recorded 697 ceremonies. This year, we have recorded 925 marriages already,” said Wanjiku Mutaaru, the deputy registrar of marriages.

Couples who prefer to say their vows before the Registrar’s mahogany desk to a church altar cite a wide range of reasons for doing so; costs, urgency, privacy or even controversy.

Perhaps the most publicised civil marriage in Kenya is the one between maverick politician Wambui Otieno and Peter Mbugua, a stonemason, in July 2003.

The private wedding, which hit the headlines for days on end, was conducted at the AG’s Chambers. The bride was 67 and the bridegroom 25. She fell out even with her own children over the marriage.

But Mrs Otieno-Mbugua, a freedom fighter detained by the British colonialists in 1961 for being a member of the Mau Mau, is no stranger to controversy.

A few years after her release from detention she married S.M. Otieno, a lawyer, against her parents’ wishes.

When Otieno died in 1987, Wambui was involved in a long-drawn legal tussle with members of her late husband’s Umira Kager clan over his burial place. The High Court ruled that Otieno’s body be buried in his ancestral Nyalgunga home. Wambui boycotted the burial ceremony.

Controversies

Yet it is not just controversies that are driving couples to Sheria House. One woman who got married in the AG’s Chambers on April 1 this year told Lifesytle they seized on the chance to kill two birds with one stone. The ceremony involved no more than signing a marriage certificate in the presence of two witnesses — a friend and a relative — after taking their vows.

“We settled on the wedding because one, my husband doesn’t live in Kenya. He studies in Japan and had only come for a one-month holiday and so we didn’t have enough time to prepare for a proper wedding. Two, being a student, we don’t have a lot of money for a church wedding,” she said.

They spent Sh25,000 on the whole event, which covered expenses for new clothes and shoes for her and her daughter, salon, transport, rings and treating the witnesses to lunch.

“If I were to do it again, I would still go the AG way considering that within five minutes we were pronounced man and wife. The only other person present was my husband’s grandmother,” she said.

At the AG’s offices, we met another couple who would only identify themselves as Betty and David. Both are lawyers.

Betty is pregnant but doesn’t want to get a child out of wedlock. David works in Lokichoggio. Preparing a church wedding would have taken a long time and probably see Betty deliver before she got married.

They got married last Tuesday at the AG’s chambers. Ms Mutaaru, the deputy registrar of marriages, says that a lot more people are opting for a serene and quiet ceremony as opposed to the festivities associated with a traditional church wedding.

“For most people, it is the privacy that comes with a civil ceremony that entices them. And since it is a more private affair, there are less expectations by society on the wedded couple. It is up to the two to make it work,” said Ms Mutaaru.

Another reason people resort to civil marriages, says Ms Mutaaru, is that a lot of organisations ask for marriage certificate as proof of wedlock.

Although there is a general perception that a church wedding is more valid than a civil wedding, she says this is not the case.

“Pastors and priests, just like local administrators, are agents of this office. We are the ones who license them to conduct marriages on our behalf so, ultimately, the certificates they issue are from us. Besides, the marriage certificates we offer are internationally recognised,” she says.

This means that foreigners who fall in love while on holiday in the Maasai Mara or on a beach at the coast can tie their nuptials and return home as a family. All they would need to do is fulfil certain conditions stipulated by the registrar’s office.

These conditions include providing valid passports, a birth certificate, a certificate of no impediment to marriage, and a return air ticket to their country of origin.

However, civil marriages aren’t always as serene as you may think. Ms Mutaaru says the drama of jilted spouses left behind in a remote village often unfolds at the AG’s office.

“We, too, receive cases of people attempting to marry more than once or those who change their minds at the last minute,” she says. If the registrar has reason to doubt the ceremony, the wedding is called off.

Still, it’s a significant departure from tradition. In the Christian wedding, the bride and groom worry over nearly everything — from how beautiful the church looks, how the food tastes, whether the colours match, how happy the guests are to the weather.

Customary marriages are not complete without couples getting parental approval, which comes with the motions of home visits and payment of dowry negotiated by elders in a solemn sitting.

The end of negotiations is marked by a ceremony attended by the extended family and an elaborate feast. Honeymoon here is unheard of.

The garden wedding — conducted outdoors, usually for the big spenders — is also gaining currency. Flashy, big and classy cars are common and the more flamboyant hire horse-drawn chariots to make the wedding day a most memorable event.

Here, the person officiating at the marriage need not be a church minister. An official from the marriages department of the AG’s Chambers can conduct the ceremony.

At the AG’s, however, no one scrutinises you to approve whether you are fit for his or her daughter or son. There are no hustles of transporting relatives from far and wide and you can just return to the office or your business after the ceremony. 

All one needs is to place a statutory 21-day notice, pay the marriage fee, show up with two witnesses and voila!, you are declared man and wife. It’s not uncommon for couples to engage total strangers from the streets or in the queue as witnesses.

It’s this simple; man meets woman over the weekend. On a Monday they agree to meet over coffee and there, they realise they were made for each other.

They decide to stroll to the marriages department at Sheria House where they learn that they are only required to part with Sh200 for a 21-day notice. The notification is normally posted on a notice board in the same premises.

At the expiry of the notice, they revisit the place where they are required to pay Sh1,550 after which they are given a wedding date which must be either a Tuesday or Friday.

On the set date, the couple is called into the marriage room and the official reads a four-sentence paragraph warning them of the implications if they were to separate in future. After they acknowledge they fully understand the clause, they exchange rings and sign their certificate. The two are then pronounced man and wife.

When we visited last week, Room 209 at Sheria House was packed with couples filling forms or paying for the marriages. On the corridors, smartly dressed couples — some brides holding flowers and adorning coloured outfits — waited their turn.

The atmosphere was relaxed. There were no clapping crowds or an organist playing Here Comes the Bride. The registrar of marriages entered the marriage room at exactly 10.30 a.m. and, without wasting time, called out the names. One by one, they emerged minutes later in pairs, their faces beaming, witnesses in tow.

By about noon, it was all over. The long list had been dispensed with and new homes started, the fastest way in town.

[email protected]
[email protected]