On a recent phone call from Lagos, Nigeria, newlywed Lisa-Leigh Aladekomo assures me that her 2,000-guest traditional ceremony last year to husband Tomiwa Aladekomo was hardly the OTT affair that has come to define the bustling Nigerian wedding circuit.

“People do much, much bigger weddings in Nigeria,” the power-sector CFO says with a laugh. Five thousand guests, she explains, some with corporate sponsors, circus performers, goodie bags that include iPads—that is the making of an extravagant wedding in Naija terms. Not something as “small” as her own two ceremonies (a white wedding followed the next day), up to six outfit changes, and two event planners. A quick scroll through the hashtag #nigerianwedding on Instagram—yielding images of couples popping out of Rolls-Royces, guests posing on step and repeats, and brides adorned in a mix of traditional livery and trailing white wedding gowns—would seem to support Lisa-Leigh’s claim. “The Nigerian wedding market is crazy!” she laughs. “I think the Internet is helping fuel it—people want to see the ceremony straight away, so the things you can do are getting bigger and bigger. Everyone is trying to be different. For me, I wanted people to have fun. I wanted there to be enough food, enough space for my friends to dance, and something to make the parents feel happy and proud. It tends to take over you and you can get upset—but I had two goals and I accomplished them, and I was happy.”


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True, the self-described “unusual bride” put her own cool, modern spin on the traditional nuptials that made these lavish affairs seem intimate and an extension of her genuine self. For her white wedding, which took place outside at Lagos’s Federal Palace Hotel, she invited only 150 of her closest friends and family. It took some convincing of her groom’s family to hold the church service at the unconventional spot, so the couple provided “heel stoppers” for all their well-shod guests to ensure their stilettos wouldn’t sink into the grass. For the massive traditional wedding the couple set up a lounge specifically for their friends to dance and relax, while the elders dominated the sprawling marquee hall. And the bride found her dress for the white wedding in just one day while visiting London’s Pronovias: a white lace sweetheart-neck bodice dress that was a far cry from the green gown she initially had in mind. “It was the exact dress I had told them not to let me wear! But I wore it and I didn’t want to take it off!” she explains. Despite all these personal touches, after one glance at her massive wedding photo album, one realizes that there was no keeping the occasion from becoming a lavish blowout.

For starters, the groom’s Yoruba origins all but ensured a glittering affair. “I’m Esan and my husband is Yoruba and they do things differently. They are a lot flashier!” she explains. “Before we got married we had a ceremony called the ‘The Introduction’—it’s an introduction of families. My family was like, ‘Let’s have it in the living room. That’s how we do it,’ but Yorubas tend to do theirs in a hall. They do theirs a lot bigger and I think my family was ready when it came time for the wedding.” Once the big day arrived last April, all 2,000 guests congregated in Lagos’s expansive Dorchester Events Centre sheathed in a combination of gold and white “George”—a lace fabric similar to a sari that represents Lisa-Leigh’s Esan roots—and waited for the couple to make their grand entrance.

After the two families again introduced themselves to the other, as if they were meeting for the first time, the elders broke kola nut and exchanged gifts, and shared a drink, while uncles from both the bride and groom’s side talked on behalf of the family. “They will call out your lineage, like, ‘The people from this place and the kings and queens have traveled a long distance to look for this queen.’” Soon Tomiwa was being led into the hall, joined by all of his friends, where they bowed and showed reverence to the bride’s and groom’s parents. Finally, Lisa-Leigh made her entrance.

Adorned in layers upon layers of her mother’s coral jewelry—a stone that denotes royalty in the bride’s tribe—Lisa-Leigh wrapped herself in a fine green George, her first look of four she would have that day. After paying respect to her in-laws, parents, and more prayers, the couple sealed their union by Lisa-Leigh sitting on Tomiwa’s lap seven times. “You sit on your husband’s lap and the guests yell, ‘One!’ and then on the seventh count, the husband holds the wife and they’re married!” she says. Off Lisa-Leigh went to change into her second ensemble, a gold-embroidered blue aso-oke, a present from her future mother-in-law, that represented her newfound embrace of her husband’s Yoruba culture. “The blue wrap shows that I am now married and I’m on my husband’s side, and I am dressing like how my husband’s people dress.”

Her third ensemble for the evening was an all-white lace George designed by Violet Hecksher that she had dreamed of wearing since she was a little girl. “When I was younger, it was how I saw women dressed. It’s what my mother wore to parties, so to me it meant that I was one of those women,” she says. “The reason I had to change again, though, is because you can’t dance in it!” Soon she was getting down at the after-party in a gray lace dress designed by Nigerian designer Lanre Da Silva Ajayi, who also made the lace cape for her white wedding held the following day.

“As soon as I changed my mind about the dress, I knew I didn’t want to be a boring girl in a straight dress. I wanted to have something flowy, something different,” Lisa-Leigh says. Referencing Solange Knowles’s wedding cape, Da Silva Ajayi whipped up the floor-skimming piece for Lisa-Leigh to throw over her gown. Sauntering down the aisle at her outdoor wedding, with two of her best friends on each arm, Lisa-Leigh wed Tomiwa for the second time in a Western ceremony with a small cluster of close friends and family looking on. After receiving a dress code instructing they wear their “Sunday best,” the well-appointed attendees took their fashion for the event seriously. “It was kind of a challenge like, ‘You want our best?! We’ll give you the best!’ For the white wedding we just had full-on gloriousness. We wanted people to really go there! Come in jewel tones, come in stilettos, whatever you this your best—you do you,” the bride recalls. “I had a friend say, ‘Are you sure? Don’t you think you’ll be outshined?’ I was like, ‘It’s not possible! It’s my wedding day!’ Don’t turn down for me.” Creating an air of unabashed and distinct style, Lisa-Leigh topped the weekend off doing the Running Man in a rule-breaking white suit from Clan, a local fashion line.

After all, as she points out, “You can just keep going, you can do whatever you want at a Nigerian wedding!”

Also see: http://www.sheindressau.com/bridesmaid-dresses