Precious & Confidence Made The Most Of Their Pandemic Wedding!

We tried to make it as merry as we could!

Bride: Ariyo Precious – Twinamatsiko, a lawyer by profession

Groom: Confidence Twinamatsiko, a Director Strategy and Business development

Reception: City Royal Hotel Bugolobi

Date: 1st August, 2020

We were introduced to each other by a mutual family friend who thought we’d be a good fit for each other.

Engagement

The proposal was not in any way a surprise. At the start, I didn’t know the exact date he’d propose, but being that we were very intentional from the start, I knew it in my gut that he’d propose sooner than later as our kukyala dates were already set.

So, one day he picked me up from home in quite a high spirit and told me we were going to a jeweler. He drove me to (Rusadia Jewelry) at Kampala Sheraton Hotel, where we picked up a ring. I thought he was going to propose there and then but that wasn’t the case. Two weeks later, he hadn’t yet proposed!

Little did I know that he and my best friend were planning the ultimate proposal. So, one Friday he asks me to pick up a few friends and meet up for dinner the following day. I knew it was then that he was going to propose and indeed, he proposed to me before dinner at Cassia Lodge Buziga.

I have to commend my husband and best friend. They made sure the place was beautifully set up with flowers and balloons everywhere, had a wonderful dinner and also made sure that the cake flavor was my favorite.

Planning the wedding

Planning both the traditional and white wedding was quite hectic. It was in the midst of the pandemic and lockdown. Luckily, being that I’m an early planner, my mom and I had purchased most of what was needed for the traditional wedding. We had also picked out a wedding gown, and then low and behold, the lockdown was announced with just barely 2 months to our initial wedding date (6th June).

Unfortunately, we had anticipated to have big functions and had made initial payments for some service providers. The kuhigira venue was 100% covered and had been booked in anticipation for a huge function. So was the wedding venue. Sadly, some of these service providers were not offering refunds but only giving a postponement plan. This was heartbreaking because the kuhigira venue was booked in anticipation of about 350 guests but because of covid, we had to cut down numbers to about 100 for kuhigira and 60 guests for the white wedding.

Also, because the kuhigira venue was meant to accommodate many guests, we had to get another smaller venue to accommodate a small number of guests. With the lockdown in place, my fiance now husband realized that our dream of big functions had been thrown out of the window hence we had to downsize. What was more heartbreaking was that we had to postpone the wedding to 1st August which also happens to be my birthday.

With lockdown came even more complications, we had to really limit the numbers. It was really hard crossing people off the invites list. Secondly, our family members were locked down in other countries. My father figure, who was supposed to walk me down the Isle was held up in Zimbabwe so he couldn’t attend the wedding as flights hadn’t yet been resumed. Some of my bridesmaids were out of the country hence could not make it. It was so sad that some of my friends had to attend the wedding via Instagram live and Snapchat stories.

Also, with lockdown in place, meant that my fiance and I couldn’t hold wedding meetings to involve our friends in the planning. All the meetings were done online. We had a small committee made up mostly him, I and about 2 other friends. My mom, my sisters and a few aunties literally planned the whole kuhigira. My girlfriends also could not throw me a bridal shower because of the scare caused by the pandemic.

However, our families tried to make the period as merry as they could. We partied three days in a row. Thursday was 30th July was my kuhigira, Friday 31 my family organised another send off party as the boys had a stag party, and then Saturday 1st August was our white wedding. All in all we made sure to have fun on all these days. We’d settled with quite organised service providers who did not require chasing around and really offered wonderful service and timely delivery.