The Sunday Mail
Ululation accompanied by excited whistling engulf Malwatte Village Resort in Marondera.
Tendai Mbirimi – Bridal Writer
Pauline Mureriwa gets on board of a tractor
The source of the joy is a rare spectacle — a group of smartly dressed men holding hoes, pitch forks and shovels, surrounding a flamboyantly dressed groom in a wheelbarrow, huge smile on his face.
A red tractor roars, sending a huge cloud of smoke into the sky. An elegant bride sits on the rear left mudguard, the bridal team behind her.
This was the wedding of Masimba Muyambo and Pauline Mureriwa in a colourful ceremony where a wheelbarrow was used as the groom’s carriage and a tractor as the bride’s locomotive.
No fancy motorcade. Just a barrow and a tractor.
The trend with Zimbabwean weddings is opulence and wealth, as if to try and outdo each other.
Not for our Marondera couple.
Masimba told The Sunday Mail Leisure that he and his bride grew up on farms and they both wanted to capture this in their nuptials.
“We wanted our wedding to be a typical farm wedding since the two of us have a farm life background,” said Masimba. “The tractor and wheelbarrow concept was meant to identify our big day with how we were brought up and who we are.”
Masimba and Pauline are both employed as financial advisors at CBZ Life in Harare.
Among their quests on teh big day were Women’s Affairs, Gender and Community Development Minister Nyasha Chikwinya and the local business community.
Incorporating a historical theme to a wedding can add flavour to the event. This can be a fun way to make your wedding memorable.
Consider the tradition of jumping the broom.
Jumping the broom originated in the 18th century during the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade. Weddings for the enslaved had to be cheap, and so instead of exchanging rings, couples would literally jump over a slightly elevated broom to represent their commitment to each other.
Whoever jumped higher was the head of the household.
Today, some couples incorporate broom-jumping in their ceremonies as a tribute to their forebears.
The Jewish tradition says before you were born, you and your soulmate were a single soul. God made the soul two parts and two people were born.
Each separated soul grew and matured as an individual with a mission to find the other half and reunite.
Under the chupah (wedding canopy), the Jewish couple celebrates by breaking glass and shouting “Mazel Tov!”
Could this be history in the making for the Muyambo and Mureriwa families? Can the wheelbarrow and tractor concept stand the test of time?
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