Planning a wedding 'Naija style'

About a fortnight or so before we officially postponed the wedding, I got a facebook message from a girl I know:

chichi! How are you? Hope all wedding plans are going great?! I wanted to know if your wedding is a typical naija wedding where i can just come..or do i need to be formally invited? Sorry to ask! Xx

Now I know the girl and she is a sweet girl, but I found the message quite funny.

Planning a wedding is difficult at the best of times, but in our culture we have the added fun of never really knowing how many people are actually going to turn up. RSVP is just a fancy phrase to put on the bottom of your invites.

People ask me 'how many people are coming to your wedding'? My response? 'Well I can tell you how many we have invited!' - the number that will turn up on the day is a completely different matter.

We've really tried to encourage our family and friends to let us know whether they are attending wedding events as it helps with planning; I mean the caterer needs to have a ball park right!

Not knowing numbers can cause problems with your venue, because you need to be able to accommodate your guest list comfortably plus around 20% for crashers. In Manchester you're kind of limited once you reach 500+, which is a serious reality with our wedding.

Many have tried (and failed) to deal with this issue as it something that is embedded within our culture.

Nigerian Weddings = family and friends (and friends of family and family of friends)!

To girl who sent me the message on FB, I have extended her an invitation for her boldness!

{Check out this wedding I went to in July, makes my wedding look small!}

'So when's the new date'

As expected people keep asking me this question and it is starting to annoy me now. What part of 'as soon as we set a new date we will let you know'!

Right now we have a million and one things to sort out, please be patient.

Ok - vent over!

Need to focus...

So I don't when my new wedding date is, but either way I want to be ready.

Ready emotionally. Ready physically. Ready spiritually. Ready.

So this weekend is bank holiday weekend. Traditionally reserved for all those unwanted DIY tasks around the home. Whilst I have spent some time tidying the flat and doing laundry and screwing the fridge back together (don't ask!), I have also spent a bit a time thinking about the future. I want to get more organised and not be fire fighting all the time. I want to be one step ahead not only at work but in my personal life too. I no longer want to awarded a 1st Class honours in procrastination!

So thinking about being ready here are my goals for this new 'school year' (September 1st is round the corner people).

1. Sort out my finances and by this I mean, all my payments, my bills, my DD make sure they are correct. Make sure I'm paying off the right things and saving for the right things. Not rack up any debt and build up my emergency funds.

2. Focus on my health. I have been getting better on the food side, eating more healthily (apart from the odd M&M fix!), drinking more water, taking my vitamins (you should see my nails - they look amazing). Need to start making visits to the Gym. I joined a month ago and haven't been once. Having said that I am walking over 2 miles a day, which I wasn't doing before. But I need to really up my fitness so that I can tone up and slim down. My wedding dress fits as I am but I want to look my BEST and not have any regrets. Number wise I need to lose 3 stone (according to my BMI) however I am a realistic person, so will aim for 1-2. Need to continue to look after my skin and the rest of my body. Booking in for my bi-annual eye test and 6 monthly dental.

3. Declutter my life. Ebay and Amazon are there for a reason. Need to get off my a**** and put some listings up. Have loads of CDs and books that I don't want.

4. Need to manage my time better at work and be more pro-active rather than being on the back foot. Need to think about career development and where I want to go. Need to pick up my professional qualifactions again and start studying (that's a 2010 goal).

5. Make use of the technology and facilities around me. Example, I did my grocery shopping online yesterday. Very simple and easy and presto 24 hours later it was delivered. Sooo much easier than going to the store and battling with other weekend shoppers.

6. Focus on my relationship with God making sure I am relating to him like I should be. Reading my bible and praying daily. I want to start writing things down, so I can remind myself of the promises God makes and when times are tough I can look back and see all the great things he has done and be encouraged.

7. Last but not least, focus on my relationship and up coming marriage. I am due to marry a truly wonderful man, who loves and respects me. I thank God for blessing me with a wonderful man and I want to be the best wife I can be, so I need to focus on those rough areas of my personality that need smoothing over. Patience being one of them. The past few months have taught me a lot about patience and God continues to test this trait in me. I want to get better. I will get better.

So these are my focus goals - I will keep you posted on how it goes.

I am tired.

Two weeks from today I would have been married. We would have been celebrating at our reception with all our family and friends. But alas it was not meant to be (at least not for that date). As we speak Mr E and I have had some sort of weird fight and he has left to go back to his place.

I feel exhausted both physically but emotionally as well. The frustrations, stress and disappointments of recent events are starting to take their toll.

I started blogging then I stopped.

I have always enjoyed reading blogs. You get such insight into other people lives, dreams, aspirations. I've learnt so much from reading them, from picking up DIY tips, money saving advice, marriage planning advice and suchlike. I started blogging back in February right at the beginning of the wedding planning process and was pretty consistent for a few months.

I remember when I first started blogging. I got mixed responses about it. Mr E was very supportive, of course, saying that it gave him insight into my thoughts and what I was thinking. He really liked my writing style and I really appreciated his feedback. My family thought differently. My mum was like 'what's a blog? And why do you need one?'. My brother in America was like 'who can read this?'. I assured him that his identity would remain anonymous unless he said otherwise.

I have missed blogging and vow to resume my writing. Stay tuned!

Wedding is postponed!

So our wedding is postponed.

It's been pretty hard to swallow but I'm now at peace with the decision as it was the right thing to do given the circumstances.

Twenty days...we would have been married in 20 days..!

All I know right now is that God is control of the entire situation and the devil is a liar. In all things we must give thanks 1 thess 3:18.

Thank you to everyone with their supportive messages and texts. We look forward to announcing a date very soon.