The Zulu bride had intended to approach the groom's family homestead in her shimmering white wedding gown, with her pearl-studded headdress and 20-foot-long train. But her husband's relatives would have none of it.
The wedding festivities came to a standstill. The singing stopped. Negotiations began as family members from both sides milled around on the dusty road outside the groom's family's property, each side clucking over the other's stubbornness. Eventually it was decided that Nompumelelo Mkhwanazi, surrounded by her family, could come as far as the gate in her white dress.
But then she would have to go away again to change into a traditional beaded skirt and leopard-skin collar before actually being welcomed by the Mthembus -- who had slaughtered a pale brown cow for the occasion and carefully divided the meat between the two families, in Zulu tradition.
''After that she is theirs,'' joked the bride's uncle, Joe Mkhwanazi, who had led her side's negotiating team and agreed to the compromise. ''They can do what they want with her.''
Across South Africa, in black townships and in rural villages, tribal marriage ceremonies are under assault, and it is not merely because young women want the white dresses. They are also seeking the stronger legal rights that state-sanctioned weddings hold out for them.
Under apartheid, marriages following local tradition were denied state recognition. Though widely practiced, they were governed by tribal law, which made wives wards of their husbands. Once married, a woman could not own property, and if divorced, she had no claim to any of the couple's assets. Her husband could take another wife without her consent.
The apartheid Government, geared to the needs of whites, recognized only weddings in which couples obtained a license and were married by someone the state had authorized.
Last fall, however, Parliament passed a law recognizing tribal marriages and seeking to bring them into line with the country's new Constitution, which guarantees equal rights to women.
The new law allows a wife in a tribal marriage to own property and gives her half the marital assets in case of divorce, as do other state-sanctioned marriages. It continues, however, to allow a husband who has been married only under tribal law to take more than one wife -- as long as the first wife agrees and there is a formal inventory of property to protect the first wife's claims.
Many women's rights advocates acknowledge that the law governing tribal weddings was a compromise. But they contend that it was unavoidable. The rural areas are filled with women in polygamous marriages -- and outlawing their marriages would have been more hurtful and than helpful, rights experts say. In addition, they assert that if polygamy was outlawed, many men would refuse to marry at all.
As Liesl Gerntholtz, legal director of the South African Government's Commission on Gender Equality, put it: ''For many women in the rural areas, these marriages are their only hope of access to resources -- housing and water. Yes, it's problematic. But in some of these areas women are not in the position to negotiate the kind of relationship they want to have.''
Still, Ms. Gerntholtz says, the new laws represent a major gain, and the property clauses will eventually make an impact. ''Our hope is that now it will be so expensive that polygamy will eventually die out,'' she said.
Already, she points out, tribal marriages are on the wane.
Since South Africa never recognized them, there are no statistics on them. But Likhapha Mbatha, a researcher at the University of Witwatersrand's Center for Applied Legal Studies, says that even before the new law, black South Africans had increasingly been mixing their cultural traditions with others and insisting on a state-sanctioned ceremony as well. Part of the impetus was the influence of Christianity.
Those most likely to mix both were the most urbanized and educated. In many cases, weddings have become an expensive mix of both cultures, with aggravation and amusement for everyone involved.
White Ritual, Zulu Flair
The nuptials of Nompumelelo Mkhwanazi and Mthokozisi Mthembu began on a recent Saturday with a ''white wedding'': a Christian ceremony, which took place in her family's Baptist church near their home in a township outside Richards Bay on South Africa's east coast.
The service had elements of African tradition, though. For instance, family elders from both sides of the aisle gave speeches describing the many virtues of their own families, in a kind of jovial contest. At one point, the bride's uncle made her stand to show how sturdily built she was -- ''like an ox,'' he said. The groom, he pointed out, was just a short man.
The couple, known to their friends and family as Mpume and Guava, did not argue about having both kinds of ceremonies. They agreed immediately that both were necessary to satisfy their respective families. The bride, who lets her outgoing husband do most of the talking, said demurely that she would not have been happy with only a Zulu wedding.
''I am not going to feel good,'' she said. ''There are people in my family who would want to see me in a white dress and even myself, I liked to see it.''