One wouldn’t call meeting my fiancée love at first sight. It was hardly two people meeting to chart a future together, but had I known it was going to end up as a happy ever after story then maybe I would have had the liver to ask for her number at first.
After a lot of searching, using her name and surname on the internet, I stumbled upon her Instagram page and we hit it up from there. Opportunity doesn’t come but once, maybe twice. The speed at which love caught us both, it swept us both off our feet.
However, I’m not here to talk about our love for one another but about the country we both live in. I’m enraged
A few months after we had gotten engaged, we had a wedding to plan and a venue to book. We pinned down February 16 as an ideal date, but the Presidential elections were scheduled to hold the same day, so we opted for the next weekend, February 23, 2019.
The venue we had in mind for the reception is a “hot cake” for intending couples so getting a date was difficult, but fortunately, February 23rd was available. We grabbed it with both hands.
We both work in different establishments so planning a wedding entailed requesting for leave from office. I got mine to start Monday, February 18, and run till Saturday, March 2, so I could resume work on Monday, the 4th of March. Boo had hers pinned for February 20, to also resume work Monday, 4th of March.
We had all the logistics for the wedding already planned and booked for the 23rd of February. It was going to be a special day. My relatives, traveling to attend the wedding, had their flights booked to arrive Nigeria on the week of our wedding. Flights had to be booked to Athens in Greece in advance to reduce costs before traveling down to Santorini for our week-long honeymoon scheduled to commence on the 25th of February, and a return flight on the 1st of March. Hotel rooms were also booked in advance.
Flights ✓
Venue ✓
Hotel bookings ✓
Venue ✓
Hotel bookings ✓
Everything was set for the time of our lives.
Unfortunately, a week before the wedding was the presidential elections scheduled to hold in Nigeria. Elections have been postponed in Nigeria before, but we had planned months ahead, so we just hoped nothing of such would repeat itself again. This government had preached “change,” so we were hoping that mantra included the non-postponement of elections. C’mon, lightning wasn’t going to strike twice.
Oh, how wrong we were!
I was woken up by my hysterical fiancée around 4 AM in the morning when the sleep was just getting sweet.
“Stephen,” she yelled over the phone.
She calls me by my name only when she’s angry or upset.
“Stephen, they have postponed the elections,” she said, crying.
“Calm down, love, calm down. I can’t hear you. Stop crying. What’s going on?” I said while I tried to steady myself in bed.
“INEC has postponed the election to the 23rd of February,” she said, defeated.
“Let me call you back, love,” was the next thing that came out my mouth out of disbelief.
I turned on my data if only to confirm and prove her wrong. An alert popped up on my phone which made my head spin:
BREAKING NEWS: INEC Postpones Presidential Elections to February 23rd, 2019.
OMG! Our wedding date!
No comments:
Post a Comment