The GM Traditional - A Fusion of Igbo and Yoruba Culture

In exciting news guys, our CCBlog is backkk! I (Gozie) recently got married, last year and I have to tell you, being a bride is a completely different experience from being a Planner. Anyways we thought, why not kick off by posting highlights from the Traditional GMWedding! As a planner you would think planning your own wedding would be easy but I’ll tell you, it was no easy task! I was so sure that because I plan events all the time and I’m good at making decisions for my clients, I would be able to do the same for myself with the same ease but this was very, very far from the case- I was extremely indecisive! Thankfully I was surrounded with an amazing army of family, friends, the CC team and God-sent vendors who knew me well and stepped in to make decisions for me at times that I was unable to do so. I definitely appreciate the value of event planners after this experience!

THE TIMELINE

We technically had a year to plan the wedding because my fiancé and I got engaged in April 2017 and set the weddings for April 2018. This was intentional as I wanted to give our team time to still focus on our existing CC clients events (as I didn’t want any of our clients experiences to be altered in any way due to my wedding plans) and I wanted to give myself enough time to get into the creative space I needed to plan. Even though we had a year, we didn’t really start planning until the end of January 2018 (3-4 months before the wedding) because of the busy “Ember Season” I didn’t want to “steal” any quality time from my clients. Plus, I had serious creative block until February/March and so I wasn’t able to envision my wedding and design the inspiration board for it until I had the breakthrough.

THE PLANNING PROCESS

I’m not very good at asking for help and so I tried to manage my workload and wedding planning for as long as I could. I also kept telling everyone that I had everything under control when I really was crumbling from the stress of everything. Luckily, my 2 amazing sisters and mother literally stepped in (in major ways) the last few months before the wedding and took most of the responsibilities away from me and started making decisions for me (based on their in-depth knowledge of me).

The hardest decision for me was deciding on the Invitation designs. In my opinion, event invitations sets the tone for an event and give guests a sneak peek of what to expect at the event. At this point I was still struggling with major creative block and was unable to envision the look and feel for the traditional wedding. However, I was dealing with parents (my mother especially) demanding that my invitations arrive yesterday! I had a mental idea of what I wanted but my thoughts were scattered to say the least and I struggled to communicate my design ideas with myself. I have to say that when planning a wedding or an event, it is important to include someone who knows you completely so that they can communicate on your behalf when indecision hits because it most likely will. Luckily my sister (who might as well be my twin) and the amazing Parchment by Dami (who I had worked with previously and share similar design styles) translated my scattered simple thoughts and designed and delivered (in record time) invitations that were better than what I had in mind.

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Finalizing on invitations broke my creative block and helped my team and I narrow down and design the look and feel for my wedding. Up until this point I had been trying to design a “great wedding” and I initially tried to stay away from everything that defined me personally such as my love for rustic elements just because I had executed similar concepts in various ways for our CC clients and felt it would be “typical”. During this time I came across some upside down floral woven basket chandeliers from a Mexican based Instagram page, which took me back to the cane basket weavers under the bridge in Maryland, Ikeja where I grew up.

I wanted traditional elements used in dramatic ways (hence the basket chandeliers and the photo area) but I also wanted to infuse some rustic elements (which I found I couldn’t run away from) in a modern and clean way. A lot of people don’t know this about me but I am extremely color averse. If I could, I would live and breathe in white and nude tones and so I decided to take a risk and utilize colors for the traditional wedding.

Now, because I am terrified of color, I knew they would have to be utilized in a way that wouldn’t overwhelm me and so this influenced the color palette we ended up settling on. I would typically use white or ivory as my base and build the other colors into it as accents but for my traditional wedding, I decided to flip it and use white only as the accent color. We utilized the soft colors in the palette (peach and mint) as the base instead, used a rich purple berry tone as our dramatic accent color and then still added greens because I’m a rustic girl at heart.

At Coker Creative, I find that our best designs are those designs that are a refection of one or both of the individuals we are designing for. I was able to create the perfect design (which I absolutely loved) when I decided to stay true to my design style and myself. At the end of the day, I actually felt like we surpassed our initial plan because (and many people might not believe me) I didn’t have huge plans or expectations for my wedding. I was so involved in the planning and over it at that point (because I wasn’t able to make the transition from planner to bride until 2 days before the traditional wedding), that as long as the guests that showed up had something to eat, something to drink, got to dance a bit and generally thought that the décor was nice, I was okay!

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THE VENDORS

Deciding on the vendors for the wedding was not clear-cut because I’ve worked with a lot of amazing vendors over the years and so if I could, I would have included as many vendors as possible in some way. Like I said earlier, I struggled with creative block during this process and my decision making skills were impaired because I couldn’t separate myself as the bride from the planner and so I knew I had to work with a decorator that understood me personally and could help me filter through my ideas and arrive at my design style.

I decided to go with Sarao as the decorator because they are brilliant and they’ve always gotten us creatively, which is extremely important. If you know anything about events, you know that design is one thing and execution is a whole other thing! I knew that regardless of the design brief given, they would interpret the inspiration and have the décor reflect my style. Sarao took the inspiration board and destroyed my expectations! It was honestly spectacular and I couldn’t believe it was my wedding.

THE TRADITIONAL ATTIRE

Funny story but my first and favorite outfit only came together the week of the wedding. We sourced the fabric the Monday of the wedding, took it to my aunt and designer Odio Mimonet on Tuesday who then created my stunning outfit in less than 3 days. The only thing I told her was that I wanted to feel like an elegant Igbo bride. I added borrowed corals from my mum, my aunty’s horsetail and I was honestly tuned by how beautifully it all came together! My first outfit was definitely my favorite outfit. My fiancé initially had a simpler outfit up until the week of the wedding when I surprised him with the wrapper and blouse that he was going to wear because I wanted him to look like a true Igbo groom coming to get his bride! As usual he was such a great sport about it.

My second outfit was my Yoruba Iro and Buba Komole that my in-laws dressed me in from Deola Sagoe. There was a bit of miscommunication is the design of my Komole and so I honestly didn’t get to see what my outfit looked like until 2 days before the wedding which you can imagine as a bride was stressful but I was very pleased when I tried on the final version of my outfit. Mayowa’s Agbada was made by Deko. We got our outfits made separately and due to long distance, never actually matched our looks and so we didn’t get to see each other in our outfits until our second change at the venue but it looked as if the vibrant colours were planned!

My last outfit was by Odio Mimonet as well. I absolutely loved this dress. I shared an inspiration photo with her, which inspired the look for the evening dress. I wanted something comfortable yet still elegant, timeless, traditional and bridal all in one. We sent swatches of the fabric for my dress to Turban Tempest designed my amazing Turban 2 days before the wedding after we sent swatches of the dress to her and I didn’t get to see the final design until the night before. ALL my outfits ended up coming together at the last minute but were perfect in every way and surprisingly I was extremely calm through it all. I also tried to run away from Purple (which is my favourite colour) but randomly two of my outfits ended up being various shades of purple and I couldn’t have imagined them any other way.

THE HIGHLIGHT

It was definitely the end of the night! There was sooo much love, joy and happiness in the room. Unfortunately, I don’t remember a lot of the details from the day (it goes by really quickly). However, the feedback was beyond our wildest expectations. I hardly ever smile or dance but apparently, I smiled and danced the entire day, guests complained that they were overfed and had too much to drink and people could not seem to stay off the dance floor. I am extremely grateful for the entire team involved in the planning and execution of The GM Wedding, I’ve never experienced as much love as I experienced during this period. I know I wasn’t the easiest of brides so i’m superrr grateful, God bless you all really for ensuring everything went as planned and even better!