Melkah! A Pre-Wedding Celebration

As you know, I was hoping to attend a Saudi wedding party before I left this country, so I am happy to say that recently I got the chance to see a "melkah." A melkah is a pre-wedding party in which the bride and groom sign the marriage contract, making it official. The melkah is usually just a small gathering followed by a big wedding; but in this case, the bride was having a small, private wedding, so she had a huge melkah - just the kind of thing I had been hoping to see.

The bride was the sister of one of my Saudi co-workers from last year. After checking with her on what was acceptable to wear, I organized my ride and got dressed. Saudi events are always very late – which would explain why I was zipping up my little black dress and putting on mascara at 10:00 at night, while my husband and kids were already fast asleep in bed!

Another teacher and I shared a taxi and made the long journey to the area of town where all the wedding halls were. When we reached the hall, we slipped inside, took off our abayas, checked our camera devices, got squirted with perfume and wafted with incense by the welcomers, and entered the all-women party. We walked in tentatively, looking around for one familiar face – but there was none. A lady approached us and asked us whom we knew at this wedding. We told her our friend's name, but the woman looked confused. To our embarrassment, we were at the wrong party. As we tried to call our friend and get better directions, the women at the current wedding invited us to stay and enjoy their party. "Thank you; that's so nice," we said, "but our friend is waiting!" Luckily, our friend sent her 16-year-old brother in a new white truck to show us the way to the correct wedding hall.


This time when we walked in, we immediately saw our friend Hanan in a beautiful sea-green dress with a jeweled top. We entered the lavishly-decorated hall packed with rows and rows of tables draped in white and topped with elaborate fresh flowers with sparkly lights. Carafes of coffee and tea, goblets of fresh juice, platters of savory pastries, and plates of Arabic sweets, chocolates, and tidbits to dip in various sweet sauces also filled every table.


We joined a table with a few other staff members from work and admired everything around us. The most impressive thing was the dresses. I felt quite plain in my simple black dress with no jewelry, especially next to all the other outfits on display. By American standards, these dresses would seem gaudy. I wish I could have taken photos, but that would have been impossible. Suffice it to say that huge flowers, bows, sequins, and jewels were everywhere. And the make-up! Eyes, cheeks, lips – everything was outlined and colored to an extreme extent. We found one woman particularly astounding – her eyes from lid to eyebrow were a dazzling green outlined in black. Her cheeks were topped with red, while the rest of her face was daubed in white. To top if off, her dress was the same shade of green as her eyes. The effect was, to euphemize, unusual.

A stage in the front of the hall was never empty. The wedding singer and her band of ladies sat on the edge and performed traditional wedding songs while members of the wedding party danced enticingly for an audience of only women. We learned that wedding singers can cost a fortune, depending on how elaborate of band one wants. It is possible to pay up to 150,000 Riyal (almost $40,000) for one night's entertainment. A full band includes not only the drums but the stringed instruments and flutes as well. Generally, the more religious a family is, the simpler the band. In this case, the singer was accompanied with drums only. We enjoyed watching more and more people crowd onto the stage to dance, including the bride herself, who after a while, led a parade of women through the middle of the hall before disappearing to sign the contract and escape the party. The guests stayed to dance and eat late into the night. I liked seeing the young girls attempting to imitate the older women's style of Arabic dance, stepping around the stage with one foot always leading, swirling their arms, and working their shoulders and hips. Young boys in pristine white thobes were present also – but when they grow up, they will never again be allowed to see what happens in a women's wedding hall.


At 1 a.m., the feast was served. (Yes, at 1 a.m.) Since the time was pushing our limits and since we didn't feel even slightly hungry, we just admired the food before finding our taxi home again. (Some people, like us, did have to work the next morning!) The food looked fantastic. It was a long buffet of traditional Arabic dishes – grape leaves with rice, sambosa, and on and on until the final huge platters of kupsa (rice) topped with lamb meat and even the lamb's head. The desert table had a five-layer cake and other specialties.


We met the bride's mother (who seemed very sweet) and said goodbye to our friends before sneaking away to find our ride. Once at home, I collapsed in bed, the beat of the drums still pounding in my ears.