Naija weddings!

My people, if I tell una say I don tire for all dis wedding business, una go think say I dey lie. I say, I don tire! Shuo, na only for Nigeria people dey do wedding? Haba! All these colours and themes wey person never hear before…abi na me be mumu? I say the kain colors wey Naija women go dey call, don dey trouble me. If you say blue abi na yellow, that one I know, but wey the thing reach all those kain “aqua”, “periwinkle” , “oatmeal” and co, I swear, I go begin get headache.

Anyway, for those of you that do not know, weddings have now become personal auditions for professional acting, I swear. Honestly the performances at these "shows" have now become Oscar worthy oh! In fact, forget about the "occasional" shedding of a tear or two, these days, one must weep when recalling the romantic moment when the soul mate (who by the way, was sent by God and guided by the holy spirit to that particular place at that particular time, since just that morning, the so called mate had just sent a powerful prayer to God which went like this : Oh God, you know my turn has come, I am asking you in Jesus name, to send him my way etc, etc) appeared by her side. Every single bride or groom knew "instantly" that they had met "the one". Na where dat one take happen? For “go-slow” abi na for Molue na im una begin sing Indian song?

Anyway...and when did Nigerian men become so creative about proposing? All sorts of stories! forget about good-old fashioned proposals, nowadays, one has to come up with elaborate stories on how the "d-day" went down. In fact, I am waiting for the Nigerian man that will drop down with parachute in the middle of the "soul-mate's" dinner where family and friends are surrounded for some unknown reason, take out the ring which all this while has been hanging by his teeth on a long yellow ribbon (the bride's color), recite a poem which has the "hidden proposal" somewhere within the lines and all this time "their" favorite music by Michael Bolton mysteriously starts playing in the background....

The way the whole thing is orchestrated, from beginning to end, with a wedding planner as the “maestro”, no be small thing. Forget about those days, when your mother and her friends (plus some village women) put firewood in the back yard and cooked and fried goat meat, forget about how you went to mama Chinwe, the neighborhood tailor, with a magazine under your armpit for serious descriptions, forget about scouring the markets under the heat for “lace” and other “satin like” materials for the flower girls and bridesmaids. I used to be a serious flower girl in the eighties, in fact, one could say, I was sort of a professional. I remember all sorts of weddings, the most memorable of course, were the ones done in village churches. I don’t know what it is about those churches, so cool inside, with the “choir” (anybody that can carry a tune) singing hymns from worn out hymn books, the bride and groom surrounded by mostly family and close friends. I found an old picture once, of myself as a flower girl. I had a toothy smile on my face, with a bunch of plastic flowers. I still remember that day because the groom kept trying to wipe his bride’s sweaty face with his handkerchief.
In my child’s mind, I was already convinced that that must be why she was marrying him. For the rest of their lives, he would wipe the sweat off her forehead. It’s been more than 25 years since that picture was taken, in a little village in Delta state without pomp and pageantry…..and all the rest hullabaloo today’s weddings are made of. They are still married, with adult children and they still have the pictures of that day, stored carefully away in an album.

So, una wey wan begin all those aisle waka, I advice una to seriously think of village church oh, cos e be like say the kain prayers wey those pastors dem dey use na serious “binding”, no small Sikiratu go fit destroy that kain prayer.

waffywaffarian@yahoo.com