A brief overview of Ghanaian (Asante) weddings

Marriage is an important milestone for many cultures across Ghana. Each culture in Ghana has its own traditional wedding process, with numerous steps and customary practices. As my family is Asante, and I was the bride, my culture’s marital practices took precedent. I also planned the wedding, so I made most of the decisions.

In summary, the Asante wedding process begins with a knocking ceremony (a small family introduction between two families). It is followed by the traditional wedding, where both families come together to witness the union of the couple. Some might choose to proceed with a more Western-style wedding afterward, but due to preferences, we stuck to just the traditional practices with an abbreviated Christian ceremony right after. Everything took place in the same location. I give this summary because it dictated the amount of food we had to buy.

As an aside, we do not have a tradition of including specific foods and ingredients in any part of the ceremony, say as some cultures across West Africa might break kola nut or serve raw garden eggs etc etc. This further simplifies the food preparations.

Planning the menu

With the cultural rules set in place, we had to plan the menu. There were many factors to consider. While Ghanaian foods do have a plant-based foundation, how it is served is not plant-based — there is always fish and meat present, especially for special occasions. People are not necessarily concerned with allergens, nor is the average Ghanaian consciously choosing a plant-based diet/lifestyle. Most traditional Ghanaian weddings cater to a predominantly Ghanaian audience, so the only major concerns are whether the food tastes good and if it is fresh. It could even be late for all you knew but that’s not pressing.

Our predicament was different. I am a plant-based bride, and my in-laws do have allergies we needed to be cognizant of (the allergies also meant that we had to be mindful of the plant-based offerings because nuts and seeds are commonly used in plant-based cooking). My husband is not Ghanaian (Bajan and German ancestry), which meant our guest list would be diverse, have different spice tolerances, and the food needed to be available on time. I also had a budget to stick to, so I avoided an opulent display of food.

From the beginning, I gave up the idea of a fully plant based wedding. Quite frankly, I did not care. It was more important that the food was safe for everyone to eat. We were having an evening wedding, so we wanted to ensure that there were snacks for the guests before dinner. With these guidelines, we settled on having small appetizers, a local drinks bar, a hot buffet and then cake.

Shoutout to my good friend Nadia (@travelandmunchies), who captured all the food content for my special day.

Appetizers

Take-away packs of snacks are standard at many Ghanaian parties or events, especially when there is no main meal served or the food is served much later. Usually in these packs you get savoury flour chips, achomo/chin (which are little cubes of deep-fried, crunchy flour “cookies”), meat pie, and maybe plantain chips.

My mum found the vendor for this portion, and settled on a pack with savoury chips, sweet coconut chips (a cross between achomo and poloo — a coconut fried cookie), and tuna pie, instead of meat pie. I love that they did add a little bit of our kente cloth (traditional cloth) design to the packaging. Unfortunately, none of these options were plant-based, so we included a bag of plantain chips for the plant-based/dairy-free guests. She also included a small pack of fresh fruit.

These were handed to the guests when the ceremony started. Almost like snacks for a show.