Athlete Tirunesh Dibaba celebrates her daughter’s birthday. Congratulation to athletes Tirunesh Dibaba and Sileshi Sihin. Tirunesh Dibaba of Ethiopia is the youngest female world champion in history, the first woman to win the 5,000- and 10,000-meter double at the Olympics.
And the first woman to successfully defend a long-distance title in the competition. Ethiopia’s Olympic 5000m/10000m champion Tirunesh Dibaba and two-time Olympic 10000m silver medallist Sileshi Sihine tied the knot in a spectacular two-week-long wedding ceremony in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
Dubbed “the wedding of the millennium” to coincide with the end of Ethiopia’s millennium celebrations, the athletes contained various elements of Ethiopia’s traditional wedding ceremonies. The highlights of a ten-day ceremony were a big ceremony at the Meskel Square in Addis Ababa where close to half a million people watched the couple take a chariot ride. The couple got their wedding ceremony off with a cozy engagement ceremony at the Addis Ababa City Hall.
It was perhaps the first time a couple had even been married at the City Hall in nearly a year. Other engagement ceremonies in Addis Ababa are usually carried out at the sub-city level and are rarely allowed at the main city hall. As is customary in traditional Ethiopian weddings, Sihin then sent his best men and other well-wishers to the bride’s family armed with a dowry to convince the family to give away their daughter. This ceremony, which is often a practical formality in modern-day Ethiopia, is often blown out of convention because the groom’s best men often exaggerate the quality and price of the items offered to the bride’s family as dowry.
