We’ve been dreaming about our wedding day since we were still children. A lot of us had planned out our weddings in our heads years before even meeting our grooms So the desire for perfection on that day is understandable. But try as you may, not everything will go as planned on your big day. No, I didn’t write this to add to your worries but rather to prepare you, and to let you know that it is okay if some things don’t go as planned.

By sharing my wedding planning mistakes I’m hoping it alerts you to certain areas of wedding planning that you need to pay more attention to. However there are some things that will happen that either because you forgot and your team also forgot to plan for it or just something that will happen that no one anticipated.

Wedding Planning – Are you forgetting something?

To avoid forgetting to plan for some things go through every step of your wedding plans in your head repeatedly, are you forgetting something? Forgetting to plan for any aspect of the day can take away from the experience you and your guests could have had.

When we planned our wedding, one of the items on the reception program was a serenade by my husband for his dear bride. You see, my dear husband his good with some musical instruments with the Guitar being his favorite. And he has ear for good music too. The way he’d prepared the songs he wanted to play for me, if everything had gone as planned, that would have been the highlight of the wedding reception. It would have been an unforgettable moment for me and the guests.

We had wanted to have a sit-down meeting with our planner a day to the event to go through everything about the day and make sure it had all been planned to run just as we wanted, but a day to our wedding we were dealing with a lot including booking hotels and settling people in that we never found the time to have that sit-down.

While we’re on this, let me quickly say this. If your fiance wants to change accommodation, probably move from a smaller apartment to a bigger apartment ahead of the wedding, make sure to get that out of the way 2 months or 6 weeks to the wedding. So the new place is all set up and you both have recovered from the stress of the move before the wedding day.

The way I had planned my wedding, I actually expected to be all done with planning two weeks to the wedding and just be relaxing until the wedding. But things didn’t go as planned. Hubby had rented a new apartment months before our wedding. The place for us to start our new life after the wedding. But a few things needed to be fixed in the apartment before he could move in. The Landlord said he would fix it but kept procrastinating until it was a month to our wedding and hubby had still not moved in. So last minute we decided to look for another apartment. And honestly that became the major reason for our stress a week to the wedding.

Hubby moved into the apartment I think just a week to the wedding. The move was so stressful. We could have just moved his things in and leave it at that to worry about setting things up after the wedding. But because we were going to be hosting a lot of relatives in his place coming from afar, we were running up and down to make sure the place was fixed up enough to receive guests. I actually had a moment when I was afraid that my husband would collapse just from the stress. He had to do a lot of running around for the house. Then add the wedding planning to it, it was hard on us those last weeks to the wedding. I actually thought I was going to come out on my big day looking horrible from the stress, but thank God that wasn’t the case!

Back to the matter of forgetting to plan for some things. The morning of the wedding was hectic for my husband. I say my husband because all I did the morning of my wedding was wake up and take a bath and sit down for the hair and makeup crew to work on me. While my husband and planner were doing the running around. With everything else to worry about, hubby forgot to confirm that the DJ had the right cord to plug his guitar to the speakers to amplify the sound from the guitar when he would serenade me. He said he assumed he would have it since DJs usually have it. But ours didn’t. And we found that out when it was too late. And he had to make do without it which took away from the moment. Imagine playing a music from your phone to a large gathering without connecting it to a speaker. Most people in the audience wouldn’t be able to appreciate the song. That was the case when my husband serenaded me. He still doesn’t like to think about it or watch the video of him serenading me because he knew it was supposed to be a lot better. But I enjoyed the moment and I really commend him for going ahead to play regardless. But also I feel bad that it wasn’t everything we both wanted it to be.

When things go wrong due to unforeseen occurrences

What’s an unforeseen occurrence? Something that happens that wasn’t anticipated or couldn’t have been predicted. It’s like when someone goes out in the morning not expecting to have an accident on their way but they do. Accidents happen and we don’t usually see them coming.

Look at the cakes below. The big cake is the wedding cake I ordered and was delivered and set up at the reception venue. But I never saw that cake. What I saw when it was time to cut the cake is the smaller cake. What happened?

What I ordered and was delivered

What I saw when it was time to cut the cake

Before I walked into the wedding hall (we used same hall for the wedding and reception), my maid of honor had come to whisper in my ear that something bad had happened. She said “I don’t want you to panic, but something happened”. She repeated, “I don’t want you to panic, but something happened”. I got agitated and was like tell me already what happened! It was then she said the cake fell after the baker had set it up and left. She said they had managed to arrange what was left in a way that is manageable to use. To be honest at this point a cake falling down was the least of my worries because at this time we were really late for the wedding. Like about two hours past scheduled time. That was what was on my mind. Some of our guests must have been waiting for awhile! I just wanted the day to start already and be over with. So I said to her “is that all?” She said yes. I said no problem. And that was the cake we used. Other than not having the beautiful cake I ordered in my wedding pictures it wasn’t a problem.

Everything Won’t go as planned on your Wedding day but that’s okay!

Whether it is due to your own mistakes and or the planner’s mistakes during planning, or you both forgot to plan for it, disappointment from a vendor and a Landlord like it was in our case, or an accident, there is the chance that something will not go as planned on your wedding day. I want you to prepare yourself for that and say to yourself it’s okay. Just do your best with planning and pray nothing goes wrong. And don’t worry so much about perfection. What really has to be perfect has nothing to do with the wedding. It has everything to do with the man you have chosen to spend the rest of your life with. Is he perfect for you? If he is not, then making your wedding perfect is like deceiving yourself. You may succeed to impressing others but you know your reality. The wedding only lasts for a few hours and everyone you’ve worked hard to impress will return to their homes and leave you to either enjoy or endure your marriage.

Even with everything that went wrong with our wedding, and the fact that we had to skip some items on the reception program due to starting so late that could have really added to the fun of the reception, it still would pass for one of the most beautiful weddings there’s been. The groom and I looked our best. And our love shined through. It may seem like most Nigerians attend weddings for the food, but really they care more to celebrate you and your love than anything else. The atmosphere on my day was filled with love. When I lip-synced to a song that perfectly expressed my emotions for my husband and when we danced to the songs we picked, everyone felt our love.

So what really matters on your wedding day is that your groom be present and you be present and take your vows with full conviction that this is the person you should be with and know they feel the same way. The other things are by the side. People eventually forget and move on no matter how badly planned a wedding seemed. So relax, breathe! Everything will be okay.

The post My Nigerian Wedding Planning Advice – Everything Won’t Go As Planned But That’s Okay appeared first on The Good and Happy Wife Blog.

My wedding was a beautiful one. My husband and I put in a lot of time into thinking about and planning for every aspect of the wedding. But if I could do it all over again I definitely will do a few things differently. Since I can’t, I’m hoping this article will help you avoid the mistakes I made and as well give you tips on how to successfully plan your dream Nigerian wedding.

Planning my Nigerian Wedding

My Nigerian wedding planning for me was exciting but very stressful, as I am sure it usually is for every bride.

On one hand you are happy that you’ve finally found the One for you and he’s soon to become your husband. This was especially true for me because it was a long wait. A wait I had already gotten tired of and given up on, now all of a sudden it was happening! Outwardly I was calm. But inwardly I couldn’t wait to start my Life with the man of my dreams. The date couldn’t come quickly enough. I remember I was so anxious, wanting the day to come already that I downloaded a countdown app on both of my phones which I checked almost everyday as if checking frequently will quicken time. I courted my husband for 8 months (we had been best friends for 7 years) and those 8 months felt like forever!

On the other hand, just thinking of all that needs to be done overwhelms you. Where do you start from? This was even worse for me because I had zero experience with wedding planning. As at then I don’t think I have attended more than 5 weddings in my whole life. Before me, I have had two of my sisters get married, but I wasn’t involved at all in the planning except ran errands and be present on the day of the wedding. In fact my family as a whole don’t have much experience with wedding planning as some Nigerian families do from participating in and attending a lot of weddings. So I had no one to turn to. Even my best friend didn’t have any experience, her own wedding was centuries ago. My parents are aged already and my mom couldn’t help anyone in her state of health. So I was completely alone in planning my wedding. Although my husband then fiance was eager to help and did help a lot, but what he could do was limited.

My First Wedding Planning Challenge – Creating a Budget

Every article you read on wedding planning will tell you that one of the first important things you must do when planning a wedding is to create a budget. You have to decide on how much you can afford to spend for the whole wedding before you start to spend money so you don’t run out of money during planning or you don’t spend more than you want to spend.

Creating a budget was a struggle for me and honestly I planned my wedding without having one. To create a budget ahead of planning your wedding, you have to know how much things cost in the market. I couldn’t just blindly allocate cost to wedding gown, our traditional wedding attires, food etc, without knowing what options were there and what those options cost. So that’s where my challenge came from. So when I spoke with a caterer for example and they ask what my budget was for food I couldn’t give a figure. I needed to speak to a number of caterers to know what the rate was from high to low based on the menu I wanted and then decide how much we were willing to spend on that. So that idea of just writing things down and then allocating price to them based on the money you have without any prior information, doesn’t work well.

But know that I could only do without a budget because we are to some extent established. I mean we had more than enough to spend based on the kind of wedding we hoped to have. We weren’t interested in having a flaboyant wedding. We just wanted a beautiful wedding that was affordable. I always said to my vendors, I wanted the best but it has to be affordable. Nothing extreme. So this way even though we didn’t create a budget, we did our best to keep cost as low as it could be for the kind of service we wanted. The secret to getting the best price is to speak with multiple vendors for the same service and compare prices. Then go for the one offering the lowest price for a ‘quality’ service.

To create a practical budget when you don’t have an open budget like we did, before drawing up your list and allocating price to each item on the list, speak to different vendors, get an idea of cost for the various items and then draw up your budget, this is before hiring vendors.

Wedding Planning Mistakes to Avoid

Think twice before hiring a Wedding planner

I hired a wedding planner for my wedding when I felt clueless about where to start and I wanted to take the stress off me. Well, guess what? I still ended up planning my wedding myself even after hiring a planner . In her defense it wasn’t her fault. We always wanted to negotiate things ourselves. So instead of us to leave the negotiations and bookings to the planner, we felt more comfortable doing it ourselves because the prices she was always coming to us with for different items we always considered too expensive. So if you think you can’t let go of control to someone else, and can’t trust the prices they give you, then don’t bother with a planner. Although ours eventually was helpful because we hired her both as a planner and a Day of Coordinator. And she helped a lot on the day of the wedding with coordinatiing, which made up for that expense. So you may not need a planner but you definitely need a day of coordinator if you don’t have close friends and siblings who can take charge of organization and following up with vendors on the day of the wedding.

Pick any day for your wedding date except June 12 (Democracy day)

June 12 in Nigeria is a public holiday tagged Democracy day. After my husband decided June was the month for our wedding, I picked that 12th because it fell into my fertile period, and my husband went along with it. You know, I was hoping to hurry things up with conception due to getting married late. I wanted the first few intimate acts after the wedding to lead to a baby. So I opened up my Cycle tracking app and did the math. God I wish I didn’t!

Usually democracy day in Nigeria is peaceful. No protest and no riot. And being a work free day, less traffic; which would have worked to our advantage as guests wouldn’t have to spend hours on the road coming to the venue. But what we didn’t see coming was that because of the EndSars protest where allegedly some people were shot and killed, some Nigerians were going to take advantage of the day to do another protest. People tried to warn us but we didn’t think it would be a problem. When we realized it was going to be a problem it was too late to move the date. All vendors were booked. It was scary, the speculations and the panic created was like nothing I had seen before. People were afraid of what the day would bring. Twice my husband suggested we moved the date a day to the wedding. But we would have had too many vendors to call and I’m sure not all would have been able to reschedule. So we decided to book hotels close to the wedding venue for people who had part in the wedding to come lodge June 11. And close friends and family members came over a day to too to stay with us as we both lived closed to the wedding venue. We decided that if the protest happens June 12 as it was being speculated and other guests couldn’t attend the wedding, the people we had on ground were enough to have the wedding, after all what I wanted initially was an intimate wedding, so we didn’t reschedule.

The day came and everything went on smoothly even though it did cause some delay here and there. The government did its best to put security personnel in different places in Lagos to scare people from starting a riot which was the real fear. Very few areas of the country reported rioting. Although many chose to play safe by remaining indoor, we still had decent attendance. I believe we had up to a 100 people present that celebrated our wedding with us (we had planned for 200).

If I could do it all over again I would never pick June 12. It almost ruined the day for me. It caused too much stress on us. And caused us to spend more money for hotel bookings, if we didn’t have an open budget that would have been a big problem for us. And all that could have been avoided if we had just picked the week before or the week after that week.

Think twice before hiring a Caterer especially one that’s your friend

After picking the wrong date, the next big mistake I made in my wedding planning was the people I chose to do the catering and serving of food. It was a big error.

One of my priorities when I was planning my wedding was to make enough food available. If you know anything about Nigerian weddings you will know that food going round everyone is what makes your wedding special in most peoples minds. Moreover why have guests you can’t feed?

I didn’t only want food to go round, I also wanted to give my guests food options at my wedding. We spent above what we ever expected to spend on food. But still, it was a mess.

A friend had convinced me to hire her team for the job. My groom didn’t like the idea at all. But I thought that being my friend she would look out for my best interest. We had had a meeting where we discussed the food items and serving plan. I thought from everything they said they knew how to do things right. But the report I got after the wedding was terrible. They claimed they killed a Cow for the meat served at the wedding, yet food didn’t go round, and some of those they served only got small piece of meat in their foods. We had planned food for two hundred people and ended up with just like a hundred guests, still food didn’t go round. My eldest sister who represented my mom and cousin didn’t eat on my wedding day! They had zero coordination serving the food. And because no one from me or my groom supervised them where they made the food we couldn’t even confirm that they really bought a cow and if they did, what they did with it. We couldn’t also confirm that they even brought all the food options we planned and paid for, and in the numbers we discussed.

I was so sad about the general poor service. So much regret. This mistake is a big eye opener for me. If you must hire a caterer on no ground leave them unsupervised. Any vendor who has a problem with supervision should be crossed off the list! Preferably let them cook the food at a location of your chosen. But if your location isn’t convenient and they want to use their location, insist on someone from your side and your husband’s side supervise them. So you can get the worth of what you paid for. I felt my trust was abused and I was played. And my relationship with that friend is damaged as a result. Now I want nothing to do with her. The annoying part is that they claimed they went above and beyond for me. Really? You did and N550,000 (Naira) could not successfully feed a 100 guests? It’s upsetting talking about it. And evidently stealing meat meant for guests is a common practice among Nigerian caterers. Coincidentally today (as at writing this) I saw a story on Instablog of caterers who stole meat meant for a party and they were caught. It’s a shame.

If you’re planning a wedding, you must be worried now about your own wedding after reading some of my mistakes, so here’s what I am going to tell you about that, not everything will go as planned on your wedding day and that’s okay. Continue reading from Part 2, My Nigerian Wedding Planning Advice, Everything won’t go as Planned.

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