Why I Called Off My Wedding Just Four Days Before the Big Day

When we started dating, our dream was to get married at some point. We didn’t set terms and conditions or even set a time and year we were going to get married. We knew we had to be in a better situation in life before marriage would follow.

I was working for a company on a contract basis. Apart from the salary that wasn’t good, the job also didn’t promise any stability. The company owners could wake up one day and tell you that they no longer needed your service, and you would have to leave. I saw it with my eyes every day. All those who were told to leave left empty-handed. So each day when I woke up, I prayed to God to give me a new job that was stable.

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My girlfriend was also a pupils’ teacher. After completing her national service, there was no job for her, so she started teaching while waiting for an opening. Nothing was going for us financially except that we had love for each other and were determined to make good things come from what we had.

A year after dating, she got pregnant. She panicked. I also panicked. The whole night, we couldn’t sleep. We were on the phone chatting, charting a course for our lives and the pregnancy. She asked me, “So what are we going to do?” I also asked the same question, “What do you think we should do?”

She asked how much I had saved, and I told her, “I think GHC 989.” She sighed. I asked how much she had, and she answered, “Please don’t let me make you cry. It’s nothing to write home about.” Our savings were miserable, just like us, but we were convinced we could make something happen. She said, “Let’s keep it. We can make it. Life changes, and ours can change too.”

So we decided to keep the pregnancy. In our minds, we would continue to save while keeping the pregnancy. After delivery, when we’d saved enough, we would get married. But she told her parents about it, and her father got angry. He called her names, including “a disappointment to the family.” He asked to see me, and I went. He said, “I don’t want to hear any excuses. You will marry my daughter before the pregnancy begins to show.”

I loved her and wanted to honor her, so I told myself even if I had to take a loan to marry her, I would. I told my family about it, and they were disappointed, but they didn’t cast me aside. They gave me their blessing and asked me to go ahead with the marriage.

We planned how we could get married with the little that we had. In our minds, we were going to have a small traditional wedding, where only family members were invited to the occasion, and later go to the court to sign. When we presented the idea to her father, he said no. “How could you marry my daughter as if you are marrying a chicken? When I say marriage, I want witnesses. It should be at home and before the church. What do you want the church to think of me?”

I told him I didn’t have the money. He told me I didn’t need to do everything with my own money. “You can take a loan. Aren’t you a man?”

My family went to meet my girlfriend’s family for a dowry list, which I thought would be cheap. If I tell you what was on the list, you’ll be shocked. I screamed. My family was shocked. We pleaded for him to reduce the items, and he removed a few of them, but said the money for the father-in-law and mother-in-law couldn’t be reduced. They deserved acknowledgment for the role they had played in their daughter’s life.

Yes, I took the loan. Yes, I started buying the things on the list. We fixed a date for the wedding, but nothing felt right. It was like I was being forced into debt and depression. I sat my girlfriend down, and we talked about it. She agreed with me but was afraid to go against her father’s wishes. Time was not on our side. We had only two weeks left for the wedding, but I woke up each morning a sad person.

I called my girlfriend one morning and said, “The wedding cannot come on. Your father should come and kill me. Look at all the money we are going to waste. Money we don’t have. No, I can’t do it.”

She pleaded with me that I’d already taken the loan, so I should go ahead with it. I told her I was returning what was left of the money. She asked what we were going to do, and I told her, “I’m very sure of us. It’s you I want to marry. I will come home and do the knocking rite. Once you give birth and God blesses my hand, I will marry you.”

Her father called me on the phone and insulted me like I was not a human being. “Look at how far we’ve come. Why did you make us announce the wedding when you knew you were not going to do it? Don’t step here with anyone. If you do, I swear you might not leave here alive.”

In my mind, I’d canceled the wedding. But her father held on to hope, thinking I would change my mind. It was four days to the wedding date when I continued saying no, that they finally sent a message across that the wedding had been canceled. The only person I needed on my side was my girlfriend, but she was also tired, angry, and frustrated about everything that was going on. She blamed me a little and got angry for days.

Her father didn’t allow me to their house, but I didn’t give up. I supported her throughout the pregnancy. I attended antenatal with her every day.

She was eight months pregnant when I got a new job. I told her, “The baby doesn’t want to fall into poverty, so look at what it brought us. This is pure luck.”

The new job came with new confidence. I approached her father, and he nearly hit me. “You can become the richest person in the world, and I still will not forgive you for the embarrassment you caused the family. Leave here before I commit a murder.”

She gave birth peacefully, a boy who looked like me. Still, her father wouldn’t allow me into her house, so when the boy was about six months old, I rented a two-bedroom house and asked her to move into it so she would have her own place I could visit. Her father said no. His daughter wasn’t leaving until she was married. I told him, “I’m ready. I can marry her the way you want tomorrow.”

The man simply didn’t like me. He was doing everything to frustrate me out of his daughter’s life, but thanks to sensible family members, they interfered. Even his own wife was against him. His church elders also intervened until finally he said, “I’m doing it because of God and not you.”

We still didn’t have a big wedding. Our baby was almost two years old when we had our traditional wedding. It wasn’t small like we wanted to do it the first time. Everyone was invited. We went to court and signed and later went to their church and thanked them for their support.

What Will Make You Leave Me After Forty Years Of Marriage?

To date, my father-in-law doesn’t talk to me, though he said he’d forgiven me. We’ve been married for seven years, but I’ve never talked to her father in these seven years. He wouldn’t even take anything from me, but I don’t blame him. He’s doing what his heart says he should do, just as I also listened to my heart and married his daughter. We both won.

—Dawson

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