WEDDING EXPERIENCE 010 – MAY’20 edition

It had been 5months of gruesome planning with my beautiful up-town princesS bride and Mr.Extra the most romantic groom I’ve come across so far.🙊 ooooh and wasn’t he connected?! He is the best example of ‘Your network is your networth’ 💪 tag along and you’ll  shortly understand why my beautiful bride is Princess S and why the groom is Mr.Extra M. 😇

• WEDDING MONTH: Mid-December
• CHURCH VENUE: Kikuyu
• RECEPTION VENUE:Lavington
• THEME: Simple Elegant
• PAX:  650guests

Some background information is that my princesS bride had the uptown friends and family to entertain while our groom had his Table 69 <this is only understandable to the chosen few> boys club to keep him in check (to uphold their code of ethics as men of honour)😂

With all this great expectations from external forces, my dear couple was starting out in life and although I believe their future is very bright as influential individuals in society, (Checkout MC moments and you’ll understand their greatness) they were not there yet and we had to work with what was at hand and not what we would wish to be 10years down the line.😏 This is a bitter pill that not many people accept to swallow

So my advice was that they shouldn’t break the bank to impress then are left scampering for food after their wedding day. We just decided on what their priorities are and we majored on that. Thank God,🙏 decor wasn’t ranking high on the priority list. So we saved quite a lot on that. But their day was more beautiful than those which we spend millions on because it was full of LOVE💖 and LAUGHTER😂

Let’s now jump in…

This video will give you a hint of why our groom is Mr.Extra 😁 Imagine he sung a self-compiled song for his bride after he had already gone for a 30minute run…. 😭 where are these men collected from? (don’t tell my mister🙊) I said nothing😆

My day started at 4am and as usual, started with a talk to the Almighty to bring all our plans to fruition coz we labour in vain if the Lord isn’t the MainMan in our work🙇. I was out by 4:45am and started making calls to the photographers who had to be at the groom’s house before 6am since he was to start with his normal workout regiment. They were to go for the cross country run😁 (at that point, i didn’t envy the photographers’ work)😂 but you gotta do what you gotta do to put food on your table. 

On the other side, I called the Make-up Artist who was to arrive at the bride’s house by 5:30am and our princesS was very particular about her makeup aswell as the bridesmaids’ so we just had to allocate enough time for that to happen. 

At 6am, all was going on well in both houses and I was at the reception grounds finalizing on the tent setup. Oh yeah, there’s some background information needed here too 🙈 if you’ve read the previous blog, then you are familiar with the phrase ‘Monkey-situation’. One of those monkeys happened on the wedding-eve when we set up the 7 hexagon tents as per the plan but the picture wasn’t just coming out as intended. For it to have the beautiful dome-feeling, we needed an extra hexagon tent at the entrance. That’s when you see the need for allocating some miscellaneous cash in your budget, because that’s what enabled me to order for an extra tent at the last minute.  

As I was supervising the tent setup and decor finalization, I sent the re-assuring message to my day’s couple to let them know that whatever the case, lets enjoy our day. Remember this was a December wedding and the skies tend to love irrigating the earth at this time of the year so there was a high possibility of rain ⛈ happening. Whatever the case, the couple needs to realize that this is their bigday and shouldn’t let anything to take charge of their happiness.

At 7:30am I went to the bride’s home to drop the bouquets aswell as checkup on my princesS and it was a pleasant suprise to find all the gals ready and just having fun as they waited for the chariot to whisk them away.😊

The house was full of so much life and that relaxed me knowing that we were up for a very good day ahead.🙇 prayer answered🙇

Seeing that all was fine and cars were all decorated and ready for the journey to diaspora ‘Kikuyu’ 😂😂, at 8am I left for the ceremony venue 

🤔Before i get into the day’s happenings,this church was the groom’s ‘must-have’ and it gave us quite a roller coaster ride 🙆. First, we had budgeted for 10k as the cost of hiring the church for a 3-hr church service since the groom was a PCEA member and that was the rate for members. Shock on us when we went to pay the final installment 💣 we’re told that for non-members of that particular church, the cost of hiring is 25k. (Not very sure about those figures but I’m sure it was more than double our budgeted amount)😲 

But since it was ranking highest on our priority list, that money had to be raised by cutting on the lower ranking components and not adding the budget. (That’s why you need a professional while planning your wedding😜)

All this fight had started when the florist was found moving the priest’s chair at the front, and apparently that’s holy grounds not to be stepped on by any ‘rega-rega’ I don’t know how it escalated to her being thrown out but that wasnt the time to start playing Kofi-Annan😀 
I just asked to be given permission to finalize the decor and the priest was like ‘provided that girl doesn’t get back in here, wewe unaweza ukafanya hiyo kazi kwasababu wewe ni msichana mzuri’ 😨 
I’m meant to decorate a 40 metre aisle by myself in 30minutes??😶 But that was better than being kicked out completely, so we got to work immediately. 
The florist was fixing the flowers outside then she directs me on where to set them while standing at the door and the windows 😂😂😂 it was such a sight to behold. I thank God that we came out victorious and it’s now a laughing matter.

I’m glad my awesome bridal team heed to my morning advice of being happy no matter what, and they didn’t let all that drama dumpen their spirits. We just laughed it off which even made our MOG madder (what we see in this industry😁) and I had to offer myself as the sacrifice again and be the punching bag.

So the church ceremony went on well and mark you, we had 3 ministers of the gospel and all of them had a duty to perform. Mr.Extra in action I tell you😇 

One MOG was the patron of the church we were in (the rule-maker) he was the one to conduct the church’ ‘mutaratara’ and boy was he strict or strict? Kwanza now that he wasn’t so happy, that church order was followed to the letter😓

Second MOG was the one to share the word for the day and he was so onpoint saying that marriage isn’t for children. If the husband is childish and the wife is childish and they get children, their house becomes a chidren’s home 😂😂 I still remember that preaching till date👏👏 

Third MOG was to conduct  the marriage ceremony and at that time, there was another nontraditional exercise (Mr.Extra all through) the bestman and bestmaid who matched in with the bride & groom weren’t the official witnesses 😂 yeah, i know your now trying to wrap your mind around this phenomenon 😂 don’t stress, just flow with the story. 
So when it was time for signing certificates, another couple stepped up from the crowd going to the altar and our ‘mutaratara’ MOG was about to blow the roof off 💣 he was so mad😤 and didn’t give a hoot about embarassments😂😂 now we can laugh, but on the day I was there trying to negotiate our way into the couple’s wish being respected.

Then it was time for ‘You may now kiss your bride’ and I think our Mr.Extra was afraid of what our beloved MOG would do with all the anger he had accumulated so far, until he couldn’t get too close to his newly acquired possession 😁

Fyuks!! You can’t imagine how much I had waited for this point of walking out of church coz we had stressed the MOG enough 😭 I guess we had stressed each other enough😛 I was to leave earlier to go to the reception but with all this drama, I couldn’t dare leave. So I was just coordinating with my team by phone.

Once the bridal train started walking out, I was on my way to Lavington to make sure the reception setup is ready and as per the bride’s instructions. Thank God for working with a brilliant team, coz I had to do very minimal touch-ups otherwise the rest was perfect. 

Guests started arriving at 1:30pm which was as per our time schedule and all was set, (cakes too). as they enjoyed the nice music and a number of jokes from our legendary MC, the bridal train had gone to another location around westlands for a photo session. I tell you that day was full of travels (a gamble, but it worked just fine)

All glory, honour & praise to God for an uneventful reception. I think SirGod had seen we had enough drama in church and that was enough for the day. Oooh, there was just some instances with a number of guests who considered themselves as very close family members to serve at the high table whereas the hightable was to serve 20 individuals (10 from either side) we ended up serving 60 😂😂 and it was an issue 👉’mimi ni aunty wa neighbour wa sister ya bride. siwezi enda ku-serve na garagaria wengine 😂😂 no need to fight, we just served their highness’

On the other side, the bridal team were having so much fun at the prestigious hotel they were at. (Connections my fren, connections). I had to call them every now and then pushing them to get out of there, otherwise they’d come and find an empty field 😆

After the bridal team got back to the reception ground, the video will give you a glimpse of how much fun we had at the reception. Again, courtesy of our Mr.Extra 😅 forgive me M 😜 

I guess this is also where I apologize for being too strict on the Master of Ceremony. If you’ve watched the video then you know the legend I was bossing around.🙏 sorry sir, ilikuwa kazi tu. I remember when I called him to sign the contract agreement, he couldn’t believe it asking ‘I’ve already given my word. Don’t you believe that I’m a man of my words?’ and I’m there saying the only way I work is by binding contracts and not word of mouth 😊 all in all, our MC if you get to read this blog, you did a very goodjob 👏👏👏kudos.

As we now wind down on this Amazing day, there was lots & lots of cake to be devoured.

There was another monkey🐒 at this point, as the cake-cutting aunty is narrating the traditional ‘tunajua cakie inatengezwa na viungo vingi. kuna sukari, ka-shubi….😂😂’ i realize that there’s no champagne at the cake table 🙉 they are seconds to cutting the cake 🙈 Monkey!! and the cake-lady had dissapeared from the scene. Madame you know yourself, you nearly gave me a heart attack which I’ve never recovered from. (If you get to read this, this is the reason why I haven’t called you for another job)😡

So I ask the best lady to hand me the glasses (chini ya maji) and I pour sprite inside then returned them just in-time for the first toast. Thank goodness for having beautiful opaque glasses. That covered up the lack of champagne🙈

Then when I called the cake lady about that issue of her not setting up the cake table with champagne, she was like ‘ aki i’m so sorry, let me send you the 400bob i was to use to buy chamdor.’😖😕😣😡 who does that??? Anyways, I think we covered up the situation well enough to avoid embarrassments. But I ‘pinched-my-ear’😄

I can now pen-off after offloading this eventful day (on my end), but a day full of Beauty & Fun for my princesS bride and Mr.Extra aswell as their family and VVIP guests.(By the way there were even honorable members of parliament in attendance. Connections I say, connections!!) 
Thankyou so much for entrusting RUMAEvents with planning & coordination of your bigday, may the Almighty God bless your union.

Photography by Joe Makeni  and Videography by Estudio Camouflage

Enjoy the trailer that wraps up the wonderful day……