A BEAUTIFUL TSONGA WEDDING

If there's one particular culture which I love it's garments, it's the Tsonga culture. I love their bright greens, yellows, cerise pink and blues that are most of the time all mixed as flowers and dots on one plain colour fabric. Like for example, yellow and pink and blue flowers on green.

Growing up when a person wore more than two colours they were said to be wearing Tsonga tradition. But now that I'm grown I love all their colours. These people must be duped the inventors of colour-blocking followed by the Pedi culture. This is one tradition I enjoy dressing up for during our Heritage Month celebration at church.

It was such an honour and pleasure to design for a Tsonga Cultural Wedding last year in October. I had the privelege of dressing the bride, her groom, her two sons and a daughter, her older sister and sister's daughter. The bride's name is Dudu. A beautiful Tsonga woman who was so easy to dress. She was brought to me by her sister Gloria whom I know from gym. These two ladies are indeed beautiful inside and out. Dudu had no idea what she wanted to wear as she was complaining about her weight which she gained after giving birth to her then 9month old fraternal twins, a boy and a girl. We did eventually find a design that was perfect for her. A yellow and blue fish-tail cut skirt and a matching white linen peplum top.

For Dudu's husband I made him a white linen shirt detailed with a blue Tsonga fabric. I made a matching shirt for their older son and a matching romper for the younger son (one of the twins). For their daughter I made a pink tulle dress with the Tsonga fabric as the top part of the dress.

 

I made Gloria, Dudu's sister a purple Tsonga fabric dress as she requested but then she was not excited about it. So i made her a blue Tsonga peplum top with a matching skirt. For her 13 year old daughter I made her a tulle skirt which she wore wit a yellow Tsonga top.

Gloria's daughter carrying Dudu's daughter

Cousins in Tulle

Sisters and their aunty

Despite the fact that I worked through out the day till the next day I really enjoyed this project. I don't have to say much as the pictures will speak better than I would write as my husband brought his camera happily
snapped away the beautiful event and people.

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The bride Dudu now dressed in the origal Xitsonga

A WEDDING OF HAPPY ENDINGS

2015 was somehow my year of making Sepedi garments. It was as if Bapedi people were referring each other to me. Oh but what a beautiful tradition this is with brigh colours and embroidery. I was entrusted with designing Sepedi outfits for my former colleague Wendy on her traditional wedding day as she was being married by her sweetheart Ezra. Their white wedding was the day before so the traditional wedding was actually the welcoming of the bride by the groom's family. Wendy is actually Zulu by origin and therefore they also had a Zulu traditional event at the bride's family home to  welcome the groom just the day before their wedding day. The groom is Mopedi (Nothern Sotho) and so Wendy and her bridesmaids had to wear Sepedi-inspired dresses.

My aquaintance with Wendy goes as far as 2007 when I met her as a friend of my friends. We thern got to meet again in 2009 through mutual friends who were my colleagues then and happened to be her former colleagues. One of those friend's of mine is Nomfundo who was my first client last year just after my maternity leave. I made her an outfit fo her 30th birthday.

Wendy and Nomfundo

I had do watermark my pictures because some people take my pictures and work and use as their own.

Wendy and Thuli

Here I am with the Wedding Entorouge

The Bridesmaids

Nomfundo

The Lovely Couple