5 YEAR POST “I DO” … 5 FUN STORIES

Today marks exactly 1,826 days since we took this cover picture, grinning from ear to ear in front of our family and friends after saying our vows. In some ways, that day feels like a distant memory, as so much has happened in our lives since then; whilst in so many other ways it feels just like yesterday, because even after all these years, we still are the same people at our core. I am still the girl who makes decisions with heart over head (most times) and Kay is the logical one of the duo.

As I like to do with every life milestone, I decided to write a blogpost to celebrate today. I don’t believe anyone has marriage figured out 100% so I will not be sharing any expert opinion or quotable quotes about marriage in this post… just thought to share a few fun facts/stories about us 🙂

  1. We both graduated from the same department (Geography) at Obafemi Awolowo University: Long story short, instead of facing the book my parents sent me to read in University, I was busy falling in and out of love with this guy sometime in 2010/2011. I had changed from studying Geology to Geography in my second year (story for another day), and he was in his final year at the time studying Geography. One interesting conversation led to another and here we are 10+ years after, still having the most interesting conversations.
One of our very first pictures together – sometime in 2011
Early days

2. Our wedding cake was stolen at our wedding reception: Sounds like a scene from a Nollywood movie right? I recall us being a few days into our honeymoon when my mum called asking if I made a different plan for someone else to carry the cake, as they couldn’t find it at the venue when they were ready to leave on the night of the wedding (the plan was for my mum to carry it home). Apparently, the search had been on since the wedding night and they didn’t want to bother us since we were travelling. After we confirmed we knew nothing about the cake’s mysterious disappearance, my folks went into full FBI mode and demanded to see CCTV footage from the wedding venue. Lo and Behold, they found the thieves (it was some of the workers at the venue), traced them via the vendor who hired them and apprehended them. The cake of course had been shared in their neighbourhood and it was all pleas from the culprits and their families:-(

Our wedding cake
One of my only memories with the cake – lol

3. The story about our wedding cake reminds me of the first birthday cake I received from Kay. It was a few months after we started dating, I was in school at Ife and he had made arrangements for a courier to deliver some items to me which included a cake. My friends and I were super excited to dig into the cake and the most shocking thing happened ….

Once we dug a knife into the cake, there was nothing in the middle of cake … it was just air. A big giant hole covered with icing. I had never seen such a thing – hahaha. Till date, I can’t say if it was a cost saving measure by the vendor or an error. Thinking back, that should have been enough to run away (lol) – In Kay’s defence, he couldn’t have known the content but maybe he could have done better with vendor selection 🙂

I couldn’t find a picture of that cake so this is me rolling my eyes like I do anytime I remember 🙂

4. My parents’ first introduction to Kay was via my final year project – lol: As part of the acknowledgements in my my final year project, I naively thought it was a good idea to have a 4-line paragraph talking about a ‘friend’ who was a source of inspiration to me and whose love cannot be overemphasized. I definitely had some balls … hahahaha. I remember having to explain to my Mum who this ‘friend’ was when she read my project copy.

Snapshot from my final year project – I must have been smoking crack cos what was this? lol

5. An interesting surprise visit: One Sunday afternoon in March 2014, I was serving at the NYSC camp in Lagos (Iyana-Ipaja). Kay and his friends thought it was a brilliant idea for them to pop in and pay me a surprise visit in camp. Anyway, they got to camp and couldn’t reach me for hours … they asked around, waited for corpers to go to lunch and searched for me in the crowd, got the media team to announce my name via the public address system … yet I was nowhere to be found and my phone wasn’t going through. Some of the matrons in the camp were already teasing him that “you know all these young girls of these days, they would just come and sign in and would have gone out of camp to be with their boyfriends” . I’m sure at that point, he would have regretted the decision to come – cos his friends were also starting to tease him. As a final attempt, they got one of the staff to help them with the master list where they can check the room I was assigned to and asked another youth corper to help them go to my room and check for me. Lo and behold, I was fast asleep and in dreamland, oblivious to all the chaos that was going on. I had left my phone at the mami market for paid charging and so I didn’t even have it on me …. talk about surprise gone wrong (well, almost :-))

That year – lol

Anytime we remember this story, I always ask if he would have believed I was asleep if they had left camp before someone was able to check me in my room – hahahahaha.

5 years after and I’m thankful for the choices that led us here …. It has been a journey and there’s still so much we want but then, there’s also so much we have….and as always, we stay laughing!

Cheers to the next 5 years!

Hands intertwined… hearts locked
Eyes locked …

Love,

Nifemi