The Journal
Notes from about two hundred Saturdays
Not inspiration. The practical things nobody tells you until you are already three months in and have paid a deposit you did not need to.
This Month
The twelve-month plan, in the order it actually happens
Every planning checklist you will find online was written for a wedding somewhere else. Ours is built around the two things that really set the order here: when the venue you want releases its dates, and when both families can sit down together.
Month by month, with the four points at which couples most often lose three weeks.
A harmattan wedding, honestly
December light is the best you will get all year and the dust is the worst. What that actually means for your florals, your photographs and your guests' throats.
The knocking, planned properly
The traditional rites are not a warm-up for the white wedding. Here is the running order, who speaks when, and the four things families most often forget to agree on first.
How many guests fit in a garden
The honest arithmetic of tables, walkways, a dance floor and a generator — and why the number your venue quotes is usually about thirty too many.
The Journal
Everything else we have written down
Written for couples getting married in Ghana, by the people who were standing there when it happened.
Bringing a wedding home from abroad
What can be decided on a video call, what genuinely cannot, and the four days before the wedding that you should spend doing nothing at all.
Where the money actually goes
A real breakdown of a 180-guest wedding in Accra, line by line, with the three items that always come in over and the two that always come in under.
A wet-weather plan you have walked
Not a marquee on standby — an actual route from the car park to the aisle to the dinner that you have physically walked with your planner in the rain.
Seating two families who barely know each other
The rules we use, why we no longer do a top table, and what to do about the four people everybody knows should not be near each other.
Two outfits, one weekend, and the heat
Kente on the Friday and lace on the Saturday in thirty-one degrees. What works, what to have on hand, and where the second changing room needs to be.
How to read a vendor's quote
The four lines that mean the price will move later, and the one question that tells you within a minute whether they have worked at your venue before.
Let us set a scene that looks like the two of you
Tell us the date, the town and roughly how many people love you. We will tell you honestly whether we are the right studio for it.
