Wedding on the Marae

Te Ao Hou, 1970, Page 59

Wedding on the Marae Standing in pairs, the happy youngsters send audible sounds of laughter and chattering to echo through gaping windows and laughing door-ways. The old kaumatuas sit on forms surrounding the marae, sending trails of blue smoke from scorching pipes. The grinning doorways, decorated with flowers and leaves, send sounds of silence amongst the cheerful guests. The rows of tables are decorated with veils of gleaming cloths, upon this being stacked food from the ‘hangi’, characteristic of the Maori and food from the ‘store’ characteristic of the Pakeha. The foods mix together showing the world that even though we have racial problems, racial foods are colour-blind and combine together as one body. Dinner prepared and everyone resting in seats surrounding the minister, the wedding ceremony sends its joy into the hearts of the bride and bridegroom, the beginning of a life of misery for the groom and superiority for the bride. Hair combed for once in his life, shoes polished and suit pressed, ugly face and twitching eyebrows is the simple appearance of the groom, while his wife-to-be, perched on high-heeled shoes, covered by white lace and plastered with perfume, receives her membership as a wife, with grace and hypocritical smiles. The uniting of man and woman concludes, leaving parents and in-laws weeping over spilt milk. The couple move to the rear of the ‘whare kai’ followed by the minister and members of the family. Everyone stands in silence, and the grace is read in Maori. Everyone sits, admiring the bride and groom, children laugh and wish, wish that some day they will be united in the manner encountered this very day. Toasts to the bride and groom, that they may have a long and happy life, accom-