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Ella Adenaike: Lessons I Learned From My Wedding

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Being a new bride myself, I encountered some interesting and awkward situations during the planning process and I’ve heard other brides talk about their encounters. Though hardly discussed, here are a few of the many things you might actually need to think about.

Choose Your Bridesmaids Carefully

You’ve probably heard that before, but have you thought about what would happen if one (hopefully not all) of your bridesmaids annoys you before your wedding day? We are girls and come on now, we are all guilty of pretending to like that same girl you can’t stand! (God bless the boyfriends and husbands who have to listen through our rants.) Trust me! Your wedding is definitely not the time or place to pretend, especially if we’re talking about people who would be standing next to you the whole day! So choose those who are truly your friends and bear in mind that true friends fight but they also make up.

Replicating the Girl Scouts
This is a very interesting and sensitive area. Considering the unlimited options to choose from – including choices of aso ebi, gele, bridesmaids dress, hairstyle, shoes even, etc – brides surely have a plethora of channels to flap their Bridezilla wings (note the use of ‘their’ as I’m sure I wasn’t a Bridezilla… or so I think).

This happens to be an area that impacts a part of me that I’m very particular about – my look!!! Before being a bride, I was a bridesmaid. I hated when the bride chose that awful looking dress just because ‘bridesmaids can’t outshine the bride’. Or when the bride, in the spirit of making the bridesmaids look alike, required that the bridesmaids rock the same hairstyle, despite different tastes and head shapes. Don’t get me wrong. I, just like most brides, definitely had a vision for my wedding. This vision required some coordination and veto power to sanction or prohibit some styles (I still maintain I wasn’t a Bridezilla!).

However, I made sure not to have rules like we were still in high school. I love fashion and love to express myself through my look. In the same vein, I have no interest in squashing the personal styles of my beloved bridesmaids. As they say; one good turn deserves another. So my philosophy was something along these lines – it’s the bride’s day but the bridesmaids’ body so let’s work together.

The Bridal Shower
Few months before my wedding, someone asked if I would be having a bridal shower, and my answer was: “well I wouldn’t know but I’ll know if I have friends by the wedding day”. That was obviously a joke but my point is that bridal showers are usually planned as surprises. So here’s a dilemma just like the ‘getting the perfect engagement ring’ dilemma. It’s supposed to be a surprise so you can’t participate in the planning process and that just might be problematic (I promise I’m not a drama queen). So how do your friends and family know what you want for the shower? How do they know that you want your guests to be in rainbow colors with a hint of mint green versus all white, etc? How do they know that you want a ‘bride-to-be’ sash versus a crown, to go with your attire? My advice: start telling them your ideal scenario once you get engaged. The shower is indeed a kind gesture on the part of your friends and family but it doesn’t hurt to politely inform them of your ‘ideal’ shower party. But be sure to call it ideal so it’s clear you’re not demanding. Also, please ensure you’re talking to those for whom you would reciprocate the love.

Let me tell you a quick story. I got engaged about 2 years before my wedding day and we started planning right after we got engaged. We decided on the total number of guests we would invite in order to achieve our goal for the wedding. Remember I said 2 years? So 2 years before the wedding, we knew X amount of people and chose the total number of guests based on that. Fast forward to the year of the wedding, our friends and acquaintances grew to X+Y (…and I thought I would never need algebra again). So where did that leave us? Lesson Z: if you have a maximum number of guests you can invite, endeavor to leave some buffer. If not, have your speech ready for that awkward moment when someone you weren’t planning to invite reminds you they haven’t received an invitation to your wedding (weird!).

I know this is by no chance an exhaustive outline of things to think about as a bride-to-be. So go on, scroll down and share your great, funny or even awkward epiphanies as a bride-to-be, bridesmaid, wedding guest, (invited or uninvited). No matter what your wedding planning drama ends up like, just do the best you can, surround yourself with the right people and try to relax. It always ends up coming together for good on your big day. It did for me – can’t you tell?

Photo Credit: Lightyear Studios

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