The Memorial Union ballroom hosted a wedding for Raheem Yaser and Izzy Awadallah on Saturday night, but not in the typical way. 

This was a mock wedding, and Raheem Yasser was actually the persona of Riyana Guerrero, the president of the Middle Eastern Dance Association at Oregon State University. 

“The reason why we have someone dressed up as a groom is because while we are very inclusive, we are an all-female club,” said Awadallah, vice president of MEDA. “We were just like, ‘Well, we don’t have anyone to be a groom, so someone has to man up.’” 

MEDA’s second annual mock wedding brought around 200 people to watch dance performances from MEDA, Pakistani Student Association, Kinetic dance club and Sassafras, a local belly dance studio. That’s up from 120 attendees last year, according to Guerrero. 

Guerrero said the idea of hosting a mock wedding was created last year by the founder of MEDA during its first year at OSU. 

“She had this huge grand idea of having this space where people can come and experience what a Middle Eastern wedding feels like,” Guerrero said. 

Along with the dance performances, there was catered food from Little Morocco restaurant in downtown Corvallis. Attendees got a free plate of chicken, rice, hummus, tahini sauce and dolmas – stuffed grape leaves. 

There was also the opportunity to be decorated by henna artists, take photos with props, or win raffle prizes. 

To open the performances, Jacob Gonzalez, a forestry major, provided live music on the Oud, a stringed instrument, for several improv sessions in a style called Taqsim with belly dancers from Sassafras. 

Gonzalez taught himself how to play and has been practicing for ten years. He said that it was “tricky” to figure out where to end the improvised song to “resolve at the same time” as the dancers. 

After the opener, the night was packed with dances from around the Middle East with a focus on belly dancing and dabke – a style of folk line dance. 

For the last dance of the night, Awadallah and Guerrero sat on stage in their wedding garb while OSU students Mahya Shakibnia & Mona Sabetzadeh performed a traditional Persian Knife Wedding Dance. 

Awadallah said that MEDA strives to be able to include a variety of cultures and students from the Middle East and around the world in celebration. 

“We represent a lot of regions around the Middle East and North Africa and I think that’s a beautiful thing because we get people from all backgrounds and it really is a community-building thing,” Awadallah said.  

For those interested in dancing, the club has biweekly general meetings and is open to all skill levels. MEDA is set to perform again at the Ettihad Cultural Festival on May 3.