The celebrations
Five weekends, and what was difficult about each
Anybody can show you a laid table. These are the constraints we were handed and the decisions we made about them.
Ama & Kwabena
Aburi · 180 guests · March 2025
A garden ceremony at the botanical gardens with the customary rites held in Osu the day before, and two families who had never met.
We ran the knocking on the Friday and the white on the Saturday, moved forty guests between the two on hired coaches, and put both mothers in the same car so the first conversation happened somewhere private.
Selorm & Kojo
Peduase · 90 guests · November 2025
A hill above the plains, no mains power, and a couple who wanted the reception to run until two in the morning.
Two generators, both silenced and placed downhill; a lighting scheme built for after seven rather than for the photographs; and a load-out route agreed with the lodge before a single chair was booked.
Naa & Emmanuel
East Legon · 60 guests · July 2024
Sixty people at one long table in a private compound, in the middle of the rains, with a budget that did not stretch to a marquee.
We took a clear-roofed structure from a supplier in Tema at a third of marquee cost, laid one table down the length of the yard, and had a wet-weather call agreed for ten in the morning. It rained at four and nobody moved.
Afua & Yaw
Osu · 240 guests · December 2024
A full customary ceremony at a family house, with elders from three towns and a schedule nobody wanted to be the one to enforce.
Akos sat with both families six weeks out and agreed the order of the rites in writing. On the day, the linguist held the schedule and we held the linguist's tea. It finished forty minutes early.
Esi & Michael
Labadi · 300 guests · February 2026
Three hundred guests, half of them flying in, across a Thursday-to-Sunday weekend on the coast.
Serwaa ran rooms and transfers for a hundred and sixty people out of four hotels, with a single arrivals sheet the drivers actually used. Nobody was late to the ceremony and nobody paid twice for a car.
“Our families wanted different ceremonies on the same day. Joy found the order that made both sides feel first.”
Nii Armah Quaye
Knocking and white, Osu, 2024
The celebrations
See them allAma & Kwabena · Aburi
The knocking · Osu
Libation · East Legon
Selorm & Kojo · Peduase
Sixty at one table · Ridge
The two chairs · Aburi
“Every quote came to us exactly as it came to them. After twelve suppliers we stopped checking.”
Selorm Agbeko
Married at Peduase, 2025
Nine in ten arrive by referral
We have never advertised. Every couple above came from somebody who had already been to one of ours — which is a slow way to build a studio and the only one that keeps the standard where it is.
The last hour, and the reason anybody calls us