Owambes and Nigerians, 5 and 6-It’s time to partyyyyyy💃
A year and eight months later, I’m doing a sequel to my first post on Owambes. You can read it here
A year and eight months later, three wedding ceremonies and a retirement ceremony later, I’m here to break more tables (or not) on Owambes.
Now in this context, Owambes will refer to wedding ceremonies. Yes, there are burial and naming and housewarming parties and other beautiful, beautiful parties, but more than 50% of Saturday owambe pictures are wedding’s(that number is from no other source but my head🤷),
Nigerians? What makes mothers and big aunties smile so wide?(especially of the Yoruba clan(no offense, I’m Yoruba too)), What brings out vibrance in fathers and rich uncles? Parties? We love to party.
I love parties too. Weddings especially. There is free food, at least the economy has not taken that from us. There is dance, and there are people. Sometimes, people I haven’t seen for long. There is joy everywhere, from the elegant bride, and the ever gentlemanly groom. There is laughter, seen in the families of the couple, there are undiluted expressions of happiness. There is cake, and I like cakes. There is beautiful music, I love beautiful songs. I love love heart-warming renditions.
There is peppering too. No, not atarodo peppering o, pepper them geng peppering.
What I’ve seen over the years as an observer and simultaneous partaker in wedding parties in Nigeria (as a guest, of course) is that the wedding culture has actually become a tradition. Asides a child’s graduation from the University, or freedom as a hard skill learner, a wedding always seems to be the next big thing. For parents, it has become a sort of validation of a successful life lived by a child, a thing of pride, and so it is usually done well. Sometimes very well, other times too well.
I would say that the success of wedding ceremonies in Nigeria involves the guest. Over the years, I have seen that more often than not, weddings are for everyone in attendance except the bride and groom. ThmmThey tend to be in a world of their own, and it sometimes seems as if everyone except them was involved in the planning, and the guest list is usually an indication. Yes, what kind of guests will you always find in Nigerian weddings?
Imagine a bride seeing her classmate of secondary school that she has long lost contact with in the reception hall on her wedding day having the time of her life, probably having a drink or two and chatting away with other guests without getting an invitation from the bride. The surprise will probably be out of the world, and that leads to my first type of guests:
Mo gbo, mo branch(in English, it’s interpreted literally as I heard and branched): These are uninvited guests in simple terms. Were they invited to the wedding by the couple, their parents, the couple’s friends, or actual invited guests? Of course not. They probably saw others talking about how the wedding will be the talk of the town, or saw the countdown on the WhatsApp status or Instagram story of someone they know.
Sometimes, these people actually know the guest, and that is where the problem starts. First, it’s anger: “I thought we were closer than this, how could I not have been invited". Then, they form scenarios in their minds: “Maybe the groom lost my contact and could not invite me, maybe the bride did not remember, that’s the only explanation for this, maybe the bride’s parents did not remember, because there is no sense in me not getting an invitation"
These people forget that it is not very proper to go where you are not invited. Excuse me Sir, ma, if your attendance at their wedding was so important to them, you would have been invited. And sometimes, there’s a reason for not inviting so much people, costs, coordination, and crowd reduction. However, some people think themselves as so important that not inviting them becomes a crime.
The second kind of guests at weddings are: the party geng. Honestly, they don’t really care how the couple feels on their wedding day, they are not interested in the wedding vows, or marriage talks. They are interested in the gbedu. They are waiting for the time to dance, to eat, to laugh at the master of ceremony’s jokes. For them, the dance and partying is the most important thing.
Sometimes, the bride’s ladies and groom’s men can fall in this category. Guests in this category are the ones that tend to find the most fault in Djs, in the kind of music played, especially when it doesn’t suit their dancing taste. When songs played do not match with their energy, they become sad and angry, but when that song is for the party to scatter(not literally abeg 😂), their feet start to have a mind of their own.
They are the party rockers. They bring life to the party, no, they are the life of the party.
Sometimes, they get bad looks and shaking of heads from party “aunties and uncles" and words like “awon omo aye isin"(meaning children of nowadays)
The third type of guests are usually a bit vicious in the way they choose to do things. They are the light bearers . I like to call them that because that’s what they do by their character at weddings. Won ma ma gbe torch light kiri. These ones can either shine their light by their dressing.
For males, one very nice ironed agbada, especially when it’s now white, nice cap, expensive shoes and a watch, some will even use bracelets, and expensive perfumes. Perfumes because a combo is what they normally do do.
For females, there is no type of cloth that cannot serve the dress to kill purpose. The styles, the accessories, you might mistake them for the bride, or at least, the bride’s sister.
No matter what the bride or groom wears, these one do even better. How they do it is not exactly explainable, the couple always probably need a lesson or two from them on dressing.
They simply take the shine and spotlight away from the couple and put it on themselves.
The fourth type of guests are what I like to call the ghost guests. Do you remember how I mentioned the party rockers the other time? These ones are actually more than party rockers. They need no PhD anymore because they are professionals already, event professionals.they are masters at navigating events. These ones tend to have more than one party to attend on some weekends, and they get invited to these parties, either hard copy invitations or a designed one sent to their phones, and they attend all. More like they step foot in all.
Because they have attended many weddings, once they have two or three weddings on a weekend, once they enter the hall for each event, they stay by the door, make eye contact with the couple and say hi to them, go to where their families are seated, make sure to greet them all very well, ask about how the party is progressing, congratulate and compliment their parents, say hi to everyone they know there, sit down for a couple of minutes, eat something offered there(food or snacks), and to cap it all, take pictures. Pictures with the parents or the couple can never go wrong, because that’s enough proof that they went for the event, even when they spend less than an hour at the event.
Nobody understands their doings but them. Best in attending many parties if I may say so😂😂😂
The next category of guests are the souvenirs. I call them that because their motto should be: “getting souvenirs are a proof of attendance". These guests can do anything to get souvenirs, even fight the couple’s parents or call them partial for giving”everyone but them".
No matter how small or big the souvenirs shared it, everyone in their street must know that they know the bride’s or groom’s family. What is a better and faster way to show this? Getting something that won’t easily perish,and that thing is the jotter or fan or handkerchief or calendar showing the bright pictures of the bride and groom or their names.
Therefore, there is absolutely nothing that can stop them from getting souvenirs. Shouts o, pleas o, they must get it(or them).
Sometimes, these guests take it really personal when they don’t get their meals quickly or get what they want. They are not exactly the example when it comes to patience. They remind the servers that they’ve skipped their table, or the food is not enough, or they want something else. In their worlds, they are VIPs, so they expect to be treated as one.
The final type of guests I will be talking about are the cool guests. Honestly, calling them indifferent might be a better name. These ones just want to leave the house a bit, be happy for the couple, celebrate with them in form of their attendance, eat their meals, press their phones, take pictures and go home, souvenir or not. When they get tired or have had enough fun, they choose to go home. Sometimes, these ones are normally introverted people, so leaving their house for a bit is an effort.
These are the balance in form of people that the previous category need. When the “souvenirs” complain of not getting theirs, the cool guests are ever willing to give theirs to them. The cool ones don’t like stress, whether they get what others get or not, they are fine. They won’t even put it to heart. They are cool like that.
Before I forget, I must make mention of certain guests: the tired chief bridesmaid at the end of the event, the bridesmaids and groomsmen that are sometimes overlooked, sometimes given VIP treatments depending on the event, the overstressed events planner and make up artists, the bride’s sister or brother who start to miss the bride from the reception, the ever zealous master of ceremony and Dj, the photographer telling you how beautiful and handsome you are and how it will be wrong to go without taking a picture, and the asoebi people (never to be caught unfresh, every asoebi no matter the cost must be bought and rocked people)
There is no doubt about it that guests make weddings extra interesting. The dynamic and drama varies depending on the event to be honest, but we almost always have all the categories of people at events. You can read more on Owambes and the kind of couple’s parents we have here.
What kind of guest are you? Did you catch your sub? Did you not? Do let me know in the comments section.
Till another time when I bring to you my writings and life’s observations, ciao✌️
P.S: Don’t forget to clap as many as 50 times👏
Picture credits: iStock, the wedding party movie, and wani Olatunde photography.
