What is a Moroccan wedding like (if you witness one)?

If you ever hear it before you see it, you'll know — a Moroccan wedding announces itself with a wall of sound. Drums, the keening of the ghaita oboe, recorded music turned up past distortion, and over it all the ear-splitting ululation of the women (that rolling 'lu-lu-lu-lu' tongue trill) that means joy. It pours out of a riad courtyard or a banquet hall and spills into the street, and it goes on for hours. These are not quiet, hour-long affairs; a real Moroccan wedding can run from late evening until the sun comes up.

The bride is the spectacle, and she changes constantly. Over the course of the night she'll appear in five, six, sometimes seven different outfits — a green takchita, a white gown, a Saharan robe, a Fassi caftan heavy with gold thread — each one a costume change announced with fresh fanfare. The showstopper is the amaria: an ornate throne, carried shoulder-high by four men, on which the bride (and sometimes the groom) is paraded around the room above the crowd while everyone claps and the women ululate and phones go up everywhere. It's pure theatre and it's wonderful.

Then there's the food, which is relentless in the best way. Endless rounds of mint tea and pastries, then a procession of dishes — a chicken or pigeon pastilla dusted with cinnamon and sugar, a tagine, a whole roast lamb (mechoui) you tear at with your hands, platters of fruit — served at one or two in the morning when you thought the night was ending. People dance in circles, grandmothers included, the negafa (the wedding stylist) fusses over the bride, and the energy never really flags. Nobody is in a hurry; the whole point is excess and celebration and being together.

Most travellers won't get a formal invitation, but it happens more than you'd think — a riad owner, a guide, a shopkeeper you've befriended may pull you in, because Moroccan hospitality genuinely loves an extra guest. If you're invited, go: dress up, bring a small gift or some cash in an envelope, accept every glass of tea, don't photograph the bride without asking, and be ready to stay late. Even just catching the music and the lantern-lit amaria passing in a medina street at midnight is a glimpse of something joyful and ancient. It's one of the warmest things Morocco can show you.