You Zimbabwe Wedding - How A Marriage Officer Can Spoil Your Wedding Day

In case you didn't know all things can go well on your day except for the ceremony. When that happens all things have gone bad. Yet your ceremony is essentially your wedding. If it's messed up your wedding day is as good as a flop. A total flop. Just yesterday i got into a lengthy chat with a friend who happens to be a marriage officer. In our discussion i realised just how bad these guys can turn your day into a nightmare. Marriage officers can completely spoil things for two key stakeholders of any given wedding. The wedding couple (and their guests) and the wedding planner.

A verified true story is that a couple of weeks ago a certain wedding ceremony was delayed (and everything else thereafter) after the marriage officer committed himself to seven other weddings on the same day. Instead of being there at 12 noon he only arrived some three hours later changing into clothes of his trade in the car park! Why this happened can be understood from a certain perspective which i will explain in brief a few paragraphs below. When this happened you can imagine how divastated the couple was. Let alone the wedding planner. To the planner all your efforts for months to protect your brand and build your professional reputation can easily be shattered by this one guy - the marriage officer.

What often happens with marriage officers is that too many couples assume that they will do things professionally. So they leave everything to fate in the hands of the officer. The backgrond to the Zimbabwe legal marriage system is that marriage officers are authorised and recognised to be so after writting an exam. There is no mention in the Zimbabwe Marriage Act of whether marriage officers can be paid or not. In other words the Act is silent on this matter. Also because of the economic difficulties that the country has gone through in the last 10 years, many supposedly professional and ethical marriage officers actually made a living out of conducting marriage ceremonies. The original idea of a marriage officer is that they are meant to serve the community in which they live.

Some went as far as charging for conducting the ceremony. Yet most relied on the good will of wedding couples and their families to give them a token of thanks which would usually come in the form of cash. This is understandable as these officers incure costs of travel and set aside their time to be at your wedding. So then this explains what happened a few weeks ago with the late marriage officer. He apparently overcomitted himself for gain. To survive.

This then gives us some lessons when looking for a marriage officer. As the one wedding or planning the wedding you will need to make "face to face" contact with the proposed marriage officer. Get to know them and understand how they professionally operate. As a matter of fact and with all due respect it is not enough that one is a priest, pastor, bishop or elder (in Zimbabwe these are the religious figures authorised to conduct marriage ceremonies). You need more committent than supposedly carried by the title. Experience has taught so many people this fact.

You will also realise that modern day weddings require more active, interactive and moderately humorous marriage officers. For example, there are many different ways today that the vows can be done. In other words there is a modern and rather unique way of doing the procession yet accomplishing the same results. In essence without watering down anything. My chat with this friend was absolutely eye opening.
The following is a summary of what i can say are some good tips when thinking about a marriage officer;

1. Take your marriage officer engagement seriously

2. Seek face to face contact/discussion with them to establish their professionalism

3. Offer to take care of basic expenses and give them a token of appreciation

4. You may even assign a car to pick him up on the day

NB: In case you would like to contact the marriage office i had a chat with, his name is Mr E. Mequee. You can contact him on +263772425913 or by EMAIL. As a disclaimer, i have not seen him at all in his trade so i cannot gurantee how he will perfom. However i have respect for his professionalism. I have asked for his pictures at work hopefully once i get them i did be able to update this post with those pictures.