The Diary Game: An Eventful Saturday (10th August, 2024)

Hello Steemians, best regards to you all.

Today I'll like to share how I spent part of my Saturday.

Dear Diary...
Few weeks ago a friend sent me an invitation to his wedding ceremony via WhatsApp. I was excited to hear of the wedding and I planned to attend. I even wanted to sew a new dress to wear to the ceremony, but I got too busy to sew and before I realised it's few days to Saturday. I had to think of something else to wear.

Finally Saturday came and got me really busy in the morning. I translate English to Efik language (One of the languages in Nigeria) for a website. So on Friday, I got a task to translate about 1217.40 words and deliver on Saturday.

Friday was a busy day for me as I was already engaged as at the time the task dropped so I procrastinated the task till even about 7pm before starting. This took me till about pass 11pm before I slept off.

So Saturday morning, I work up and started with the translation as soon as 5:30am. The plan was to finish before 10am but unfortunately it took me till 12pm to finish up. To add to the list I also had laundry I planned on doing and the wedding I wanted to attend. After finishing the translation at 12, I was torn between getting ready for the wedding or doing the laundry.
I settled for doing the laundry because at that point I was already contemplating not going for the wedding again.

While washing, my sister called asking me to join her to the wedding and I guess that's all the push I needed to attend the ceremony cause I finally decided to go. I hurried up with the laundry and finished up few minutes pass 1pm and around 2pm, I was set and ready to leave the house.

I got to the reception venue around 2:45 and the ceremony was yet to start. The couple were still taking photographs with family, friends and well-wishers. I didn't join in the photograph session all I wanted was to secure a sit. Fortunately a friend already secured one for me and my sister.

The decoration caught my attention. It was so beautiful and colourful and I had to capture it.
The decorator did a really wonderful job and I took some pictures from where I sat.

After waiting for a long while, the ceremony started. The MC introduced the couple and they danced in with their entourage of about 6 groomsmen and 6 bridesmaid or asoebi as we call it here.

Permit me to rate the event.
The DJ's mix was not really thrilling but he tried. I'll give him 7/10.
The MC, he got me feeling tired and bored. Contrary to what's expected of him he couldn't get people laughing. I'll give him 4/10.
And the food, the couple really tried but courtesy of the number of guests at the wedding, the food didn't go round. But from what I saw, them serve people, it was a serving of Nigerian jellof rice, fried rice and chicken.

Due to economy situation and unexpected well-wishers, feeding people at a ceremony is really hard because most times, the total number of guests exceeds the budget for the food prepared.

It's made me realize that when it comes to planning a wedding ceremony, the couple invest more in certain areas over the other. It's hard to find a wedding that check all the boxes. It's either there'll be enough food and to spare and the DJ will be so boring or there's not enough space, or the decoration is poor.

In this case I think the couple invested more on the decoration and their dresses. That's what will always reflect on the picture when they look at it; a beautiful hall and their beautiful self. And that makes sense.
I wish them the very best of married life.

2nd event

When the ceremony ended around 5, one of my friends suggested we all join him to a traditional marriage ceremony he was invited to and we all agreed. It was few minutes drive from where we were so within few minutes we got to the venue. We arrived just when they were bringing the bride to the venue. I loveee traditional marriage ceremony soon I was already vibing to the beat. The band crew were good. In front of the bridal entourage was a tall masquerade. In my side we call it ekoñ. It's been a really long time I saw such masquerade. It's mostly at ceremonies and carnivals. I was really intrigued staring not until @udemesimeon told me to take a picture.
The Ekoñ masquerade has a really long stick attached to its feet making it really tall.

Sorry I didn't capture it upfront.

There are different kinds of masquerade (ekpo) where I reside in Akwa Ibom State but I give more credit the Calabars. They have a lot of them with different belief surrounding the entity.

At this event, the ceremony was almost over so we missed out on the food but from the little I saw, the band, decoration, checked the list and the couple looked so beautiful.

Dear Diary, I had a really eventful Saturday attending those two ceremonies but at the end of the day, I got home really famished. And to that effect, I owe myself a plate of Nigerian jellof rice and fried rice by the side with chicken to make up for what I missed at the wedding 😂.

I hoped you enjoyed reading about my day. Do have a wonderful day ahead.

_{PS: Sorry I do not have images of the couples and wouldn't publish it without their contest. All other images were taken with my Redmi A2+ mobile phone.}