Nuptial Blues: Nigerian Couples Recount Sad Events That Nearly Marred Their Wedding Day
The perfect wedding where everything goes according to plan does not exist no matter how meticulous you’ve been to make sure that it does.
Some weddings are marred by actions of people that leave the bride and groom looking back on the wedding day with sadness.
An engineer, George Emmanuel told Daily Sun the story of how things went bad on his wedding day. The 38-year-old indigene of Cross River State said that he paid a man N50, 000 to release his G-wagon to pick up his bride and her bridesmaid from the hotel and take them to the church but the man didn’t show up.
He added that after calling the man for over 30 minutes and getting no response, his salon car was hurriedly decorated and was used to take the bride to the church.
He revealed that his colleague introduced him to the guy and they agreed on a price to borrow his G-Wagon for the day but he couldn’t fathom why the man collected money from him and didn’t keep his own end of the bargain. He narrated:
“It wasn’t a good experience. I was shaking and at the same time was calming my wife down on the phone. She was crying and almost messed up her makeup.
I called the owner of the G-Wagon many times but he didn’t pick up and he refused to call me back. I had to give instructions for my car to be washed and decorated and begged my wife to meet me in church with her chief bridesmaid.”
According to Emmanuel, that wasn’t all he had to deal with on his wedding day. He stated that the baker he paid to make their wedding cake as well as decorate their reception venue did a poor job that left him with sad memories about the day that was supposed to be the happiest day of his life.
Emmanuel said:
“I paid this woman against my wife’s wishes and she made us coated cassava cake. It was even stale. We couldn’t give both families large shares of cake as we planned.
When it was passed around at the reception, some people tasted it and spat it out. I tasted it and threw up. When I confronted the woman, she gave me some excuses and apologised but the damage had already been done.”
And he said that wasn’t all that happened on his wedding day. According to him, his friends and family forgot that he and his wife would eat after the wedding.
They almost finished the food meant for them. He added that when he asked for food to be brought to them in their room, they were served rice without meat and that was the last portion of food in the cooler. He said:
“I didn’t see the face caps and T-shirts I made for some colleagues and classmates until today. It was as if it vanished from the face of the earth. When I asked the guy I paid to customise and deliver the items to the reception venue, he said he brought them.
But when I asked around, not one person saw the face caps and the T-shirts and not one person got them. Our wedding album bore the name of another couple. I don’t want to remember my wedding day because almost everything went wrong.”
Blessing Ekpeyong disclosed that she got married to the love of her life five years ago. But she doesn’t like remembering her wedding day.
Ekpeyong said any time she recalls what happened during her wedding reception, she becomes sad and teary-eyed.
“It was a beautiful church ceremony. My husband and I looked happy and radiant with our family and friends. But the disk jockey we hired for the reception messed up our day. I gave him the playlist I wanted for my entrance but he decided to improvise, so he played something else.”
Ekpeyong said that she wanted to walk into her wedding reception with her dad with the song, “So beautiful in white”, but the DJ started playing Mercy Chinwo’s song instead.
She added that even after he was told to change the song to the one she requested, he refused. She said the man insisted on playing his own song. He insisted that because we are Christians, we must give glory to God on our wedding day. Ekpeyong recalled:
“I had a huge frown on my face afterwards. I wanted to walk up to him and push him out of the reception, but my husband begged me not to create a scene. I was so dissatisfied with the DJ’s lack of professionalism.
But I got more shock when I walked into the reception hall and discovered that the event decorator didn’t know how to decorate against the sun. It was a garden wedding and she put people right in front of the sun. I wanted to cry.”
SEE ALSO: Joke Silva Shares Memorable Stories of Her Wedding Day
Looking back, the mother of one said it was like the event planner and the DJ joined forces to make her miserable on her wedding day. She recalled how she was moody throughout her wedding reception and how the pictures from that day showed that she wasn’t pleased. She narrated:
“I don’t like looking at my wedding reception photos because I wasn’t looking happy in them. Those pictures remind me of how the people I paid to make the happy day of my life go smoothly almost ruined it. All the same, I am happy with my husband. Our marriage is blissful and they can’t ruin that.”
For Vera Udochukwu, her wedding day brings back sad memories instead of happy ones. Even though the mother of two has a happy marriage with her husband of five years, she said that it took her time to forget what went wrong on her wedding day.
Udochukwu said that the disk jockey that was paid an advance fee to play at her wedding reception didn’t show up. She added that he even switched off his phone and when they couldn’t reach him, they had to make do with a nearby DJ who charged them a lot for a three-hour job.
“I had a fight with my husband during our reception because of the DJ. I recommended a guy I knew who played at my organisation’s end-of-the-year party the previous year to my husband but he refused.
He insisted on using his brother’s friend who later disappointed us after collecting half of his fee. I blamed my husband for what happened and we exchanged some unpleasant words.”
Udochukwu added that as if the DJ not showing up wasn’t enough, her chief bridesmaid and the best man got into a heated argument and almost threw punches. She said:
“I didn’t know what started the misunderstanding but I started hearing two of them talking in loud voices and insulting each other. I stayed away from the issue because I was already in a bad mood and didn’t want to aggravate the situation.”
Alao Evelyn said that the food which didn’t go around on her wedding day almost turned the happiest day of her life into a nightmare. She said that she instructed the caterer to save two coolers of food and one cooler of meat for her family and her in-laws, but she regretted that it never happened.
“When it was time to serve the food, they came to tell me that they only saw one cooler of food, the other coolers of food were missing as well as the cooler that contained meat.
I called the caterer and she said she dropped the coolers of food at the venue and switched off her phone. I cried when some of my family members complained about not eating food or meat on my wedding day”, she said.
Alao added that as if that wasn’t enough, her reception dress zip tore while she was dancing with her husband. She said it took the timely intervention of her chief bridesmaid to save her from further embarrassment.
“I won’t forget how my friend and chief bridesmaid hurriedly came and hugged me while moving me out of the dance floor because my dress was open at the back. Luckily for me, I had another dress I wanted to wear the next day so I quickly changed into that one and went back to the dance floor with my husband.”
Mr Peter Obioma said that the first thing that went wrong on his wedding day was his bride’s makeup artist arriving late to the hotel to make her up. He said:
“She came by 9 am to do bridal makeup for a wedding that was to commence by 10 am. It was an unpleasant thing to happen on such an important day.
I called the makeup artist and she told me that her baby got sick that morning and she had to take him to the hospital. My wife already made up her mind to do her makeup herself so that we wouldn’t be late for our wedding.”
Obioma said after that initial setback, the church ceremony went well without hiccups, but the photographer he hired for the wedding almost ruined their day. He recalled:
“I paid this guy an advance and he came that day and was busy taking pictures. But after one week, I called him to find out why he didn’t deliver our pictures and he told me that he was sorry, but his camera didn’t capture any picture.”
The father of one from Anambra State said he was livid and threatened to get him arrested if he didn’t refund the money he paid him for a job he didn’t deliver. He added that the photographer told him it wasn’t his fault and that since he showed up to cover the wedding, he would refund only half of what he was paid.
“When he told me that, I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. I just felt sad for my wife and me because we didn’t have professional photos of our wedding day except the ones taken by friends and family with their phones.
We had to ask them to send us all the pictures they took with their phones. When we got them, we selected some, took them to another photographer, developed them and enlarged three of the pictures. If not for those phone photos, we wouldn’t have had pictures of our wedding,”
Obioma said.