Yemen-American weddings turn into national festivals

Celebrating two kinds of unions.

Michigan – Many Yemeni expatriates living in the United States celebrated Yemen’s National Day this year with weddings.  They transformed these weddings into festivals to celebrate the reunification of Yemen.  Yemeni families wished to marry off their sons and daughters to coincide with their national holiday, which falls on May 22. Some interpreted the phenomenon as a kind of optimism aimed at prolonging the marital relationship, since the Yemeni unity will last forever.  Others only said that it is a common Yemeni tradition to hold weddings on other festive occasions.

Thus, Unification Day has been added to the list of such occasions, which includes Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha.  The Jamjam family celebrated their son Ali Nasser Jamjam’s wedding on May 22. Their guests included a crowd of people from the Yemeni community. They thronged the ceremony hall, which was full of eminent political, social, and financial and business people, as well as representatives from Yemeni-American organizations.  The wedding ceremony was held at the Bent Jbeil club hall in Dearborn. The al-Afrah musical group and singer Abdul- Noor al-Shamiri performed, as did special teams who sung famous Yemeni songs and Bara’.  

The father of the groom, who is a Yemeni-American businessman, said that he is very proud and happy to have the chance to marry off his son on National Unification Day. “On such days that coincide with the joy of every Yemeni inside and outside Yemen, every Yemeni is celebrating the birth of the new Yemen,” he said. “On behalf of all the Jamjam, I thank all the great people of the Yemeni community who joined us in our excitement on this distinguished occasion. Through them we congratulate all Yemenis on the occasion of 17th national day of the Republic of Yemen, either abroad or in the homeland. We chose this time for the wedding, joy, and pleasure as to express our love and respect for the Yemeni unity and community.

The groom and his proud father

We celebrate two joys in one day,” he said.  The wedding atmosphere seemed very much like that of  a national festival. In the auditorium, Ali Qasim Almaklani, the deputy of chairman of the Arab-American Institutions, read a poem for the Jamjam family that showed congratulations to all the Jamjam family on behalf of the expatriate community in the State of Michigan. “This presence proves and shows awareness and understanding of the rapprochement between the great people of the community that is unprecedented,” he said. 

He assured partygoers of the unity of expatriates and called upon people to free themselves from partisanship and intolerance in any form in the community. He also stressed that the Yemeni community is a very distinctive one. They are as one body that does not run under any political differences, but they would always help and support the national issues that serve the security and stability of Yemen.  

Those words were his message; he wanted expatriate Americans to channel the timing of the weddings of their sons and daughters to coincide with these days of unification.  That is how the people of the Yemeni community around the United States turned their holidays to the real weddings inside homes, and turned their wedding days into national festivals. 

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