Wedding: A marriage match made on Facebook

It happens to almost anyone who has a routinely busy schedule. You glance at your Facebook page and realize around 30 people have sent requests to be your friends.

What many of these busy types do, is to simply accept these ‘friend requests’ and move on to other things. And it seems this is what happened to Henry Mukasa, a production cost accountant at Nile Breweries.

For a man tasked to ensure that NBL sings along with the patrons who enjoy its products, Mukasa still cannot quite remember when he accepted a request from a one Brenda Nakazinga. But one time in October 2012, as he was looking up something in his Facebook friends list, he was stopped by a striking, smiling face of Brenda.

A quick search through the ‘mutual friends’ would lead to a phone call and some explanations on who this Brenda was. The rest of the story takes a more familiar plot – meeting, dreaming, dating and wedding at Kitovu cathedral, with a reception at Maria Flo hotel in Masaka.

Mukasa admits this was love at first sight, laughing at his inability to look away from Brenda’s face. Mukasa, who hails from Makondo village in Lwengo district, later found out that Brenda comes from Kiwangala, a neighbouring village.

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"When we met, she said that for her she knew me; that she had been hearing people talk about me since I had been the best student at my school [St Bernard’s College Kiswera] in A-level," Mukasa says.

Some people have probably held the kwanjula and church/mosque wedding on the same day, but Henry and Brenda only came close. The two villages – Makondo and Kiwangala – came together for the introduction on a Thursday and hundreds of family and friends converged again for the wedding two days later.

"I was telling one of my workmates that I intended to have my kwanjula and he asked me, ‘why don’t you combine it with the wedding? It will be much cheaper’," Mukasa says.

By the time Rev Father Aloysius Matovu Bunnya was getting the couple to say "I do" at Kitovu cathedral, Henry and Brenda were a very happy couple. Some had warned them that they would be too exhausted to enjoy their wedding, but there was nothing of the sort.

Fr Charles Ssemujju, who delivered the homily, kept the message simple: marriage, he said, is an institution that needs love and tolerance to survive and thrive. The reception at Maria Flo hotel was gratitude galore, with the couple thanking family, employers and friends for the overwhelming financial support.

Brenda is yet to start work, after graduating in Business Administration from Makerere University last year, and still mothering Baby Agnes (now six months old). But on her wedding day, she came across as a very contented woman.

She thanked her husband for trusting her enough to wed her – despite not knowing her for a very long time. A woman of few words, Brenda says that at the time she sent that Facebook friend request, she had heard about Henry as a good-hearted guy. And that good heart is now hers for keeps.

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