Nice Day for a White Wedding

Travel
by Richard Stupart Jul 19, 2011
I’m arriving late to the ‘I threw up a little’ reception.

FANCY HAVING a colonial-themed wedding? Why not hold it in Mpumalanga, South Africa? And for good measure, let’s include guests and servants whose composition, from appearances, might well resemble the heyday of Kenyan aristocracy. Y’know – before the natives got all uppity.

And if all of those decisions made it past your perhaps-this-is-inappropriate-filter, why not post the photos on the Internet and be surprised at the storm that results?

That about describes the trajectory of the decisions that resulted in Dave and Chantal’s big day being pilloried by Jezebel as being a little, erm… inappropriate.

It wasn’t too long before the pictures started disappearing, and the original posters apologised for causing any offense, insisting that the theme was not so much colonial as based on Sydney Pollack’s film Out of Africa. Even without malicious intent though, it seems beyond shortsighted to have a colonial era themed wedding in South Africa, where blunt racial inequalities continue to persist, and the past is anything but forgotten.

As another corner of the Internet so eloquently explained, you wouldn’t have a Schindler’s List wedding, or one based on the story of Amistad. So why should Out of Africa be suitable thematic fare?

The full list of images from the event were up here, but the set is now missing quite a number of images. Presumably the black waiters with the divine little red fezzes were a little too damning.

So. Yeah. Am I overreacting?

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