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Mali wedding ceremonies are an amalgamation of Muslim practices and traditional Mali customs. Mali wedding rituals vary from region to region. Mali, being an Islamic country, the Muslim rituals and customs are observed in a Mali marriage.
Very broadly, Mali marriages are of three types: customary, religious, and civil. The distinction between regions exists in the age of the bride and groom in their first marriage, their timing of starting to live together, and timing of their first baby.
Marriage in Mali takes place in well defined steps beginning with choosing one's spouse, followed by the marriage proposal, engagement, bride wealth payment (paid by the groom to the bride's parents), religious ceremony, thereafter civil and customary ceremonies, consummation, cohabitation, and ultimately the first child birth. This entire procedure constitutes a Mali wedding.
In arranged marriages, particularly in the rural regions, marriages are held at an early age. Generally held as per Muslim customs, these religious marriages take place with the consent of the groom and the bride or their representatives in presence of witnesses and the Imam. After the bride is brought into her new household the bride gets the right to obtain the nuptial gift of ‘Mahr’ and consummation supposedly occurs.
Mali wedding practices in urban areas like Bamako are different from those in the rural areas. In the cities, marriage generally takes place at a more matured age between two consenting adults. The bride and groom themselves decide to marry but parental authority must be abided by. In Mali cities importance is given to civil marriage procedures and festivities.
Marriage practice in Peul, Mali is different from other places. After the first religious marriage, the bride and groom live separately, with the bride in most of the cases staying with her parents. In the interval between the first marriage and cohabitation, the husband and wife can sleep together in the parental home of the bride. The husband can only enter the wife's room in the dark and leave before daybreak so that he is not seen by his parents-in-law.
Mali wedding thus has its own traditional characteristics, which have attracted anthropologists, historians, and tourists to be witnesses to this magnificent Mali ceremony.
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