Planning a wedding is not easy, just ask any matron (Zambian term for wedding planner) you know and they will tell you.


My aunt, Rachel, was getting married and she asked my mother to be her matron. Mother agreed and began to plan the wedding. Now at first things were going all smooth and dandy, but then as we got closer to the day of the wedding chaos broke out. “I don’t know what to do” complained my mother. “How can I possibly handle all these tasks alone? I have to teach the kids the dance moves for the line up but I also have to do the booking for the wedding hall and…” She went on and on complaining to me. She was clearly worried about everything because she did not have anyone to help her. Who would have thought that planning an event that usually brings joy could be so stressful? I mean I never even knew that weddings had to be planned. I thought that people just showed up on a bright sunny day and ate food after the bride and groom had said their ‘I do’s’. Well, mother proved me wrong! As she complained to me, her voice slowly began to drift away from my ears. I was not trying to ignore her; I was simply trying to find a way to help her in my thoughts. As her voice faded away, ideas began to fill my head. “I got it!” I exclaimed, “Mummy what if I help you? I can teach the kids the dance and you can worry about other things.” She thought about it for a while. I was sure that she was overwhelmed that I offered to help her but at the same time she was not sure I could handle it because I am not much of a dancer. After I said that, I thought twice because I remembered that I didn’t know how to dance and that I was very shy. I remembered that if I danced, I would have to dance in front of more than nine hundred people and with cameras surrounding me. I rethought my statement and just as I was about to tell my mother to forget it she said “Ok Grace, thank you”


So I began my endeavor to teach the young ones how to dance for the wedding. I was not sure of what I was going to do; in fact I was wondering if someone could teach me how to dance before I could teach others. I did not find any dance teachers and I certainly was not going to pay for dance lessons that I would soon forget. I looked around the house for music that I thought would be good for the kids and for the people at the wedding. It was not easy; never in my life have I had to go through so many CDs looking for one song for nearly two days. By the end of the second day I was frustrated. “How hard can it be to find just one song?” I thought loudly to myself. I sat in my mother’s room looking around and hoping for the CD I had searched for two days to just fall on my lap (I knew that could never happen; I was just hopping). As I was looking around, I noticed a CD that did not look familiar to me. I got it and placed it one the CD plate and it drove it in. I listened to the songs one after the other. None of them seemed to have that zest in them. I told my self that I would not give up, but then I began to lose hope. As I was removing the CD, with the intention to put it back were I found it, I accidentally pressed the forward/play button and a song started to play. It had the beats, it had the joy, it had the excitement and the zest, and it had me right there.


Without hesitation I gathered all the kids and we began to rehearse. They all looked at me with puzzled and scared faces when I began to dance for they did not know that I was not much of a dancer. Ignoring their scared little faces, I asked them to watch me carefully and to follow my lead. They were good little kids and well behaved, but they were bad little dancers (one thing we all had in common) so they made it harder for me because I had to teach them and myself how to dance. It took days, nearly a month, for the dance to be perfect. On the day of the weeding, the hall was filled with way more people than I anticipated. We were called to dance and my heart would not stop beating. I thought that it would beat itself out of my body. I looked at my mother who was all the way at the high table and she put on the biggest smile. I took a deep breathe in and told the kids that if they danced as we rehearsed I would be proud of them and throw them their own party. That statement stirred them up. I looked at the DJ with an expression that sent a message saying “lets do this” and the song began. I danced my heart out that day, well I called it dancing and others probably called it something else. Dancing from the entrance of the hall to the high table was only supposed to take about seven minutes but it took one hour, well that’s how it felt to me.