Nigerian Wedding Toasts: Cheers, Speeches, and Customs

Who speaks, and when

• At a Yoruba traditional wedding, the alaga iduro and alaga ijoko, the professional masters of ceremonies for each family, run the event in song, prayer, and comic negotiation, and they do most of the talking.
• At the white wedding or reception, parents pray over the couple, a chairman may give a formal address, and the best man and maid of honor speak, warmly and briefly.
• Traditions differ across Nigeria's many peoples: an Igbo wedding centers on the wine-carrying ceremony, where the bride finds the groom in the crowd and offers him palm wine.

How long

Formal addresses can be long. Speeches by friends are two to four minutes. The spraying and the dancing take hours and are the celebration.

What you’ll see

• Spraying: guests dance up to the couple and press or throw money on them, and someone collects it from the floor.
• Aso ebi: the families and friends wear matching fabric chosen for the occasion, and the colors identify which side you are on.
• At a Yoruba engagement, the groom and his friends prostrate fully on the floor before the bride's family.
• The Igbo wine carrying: the bride is given a cup of palm wine by her father and searches the crowd for the groom, who may hide, before kneeling to offer it to him.
• Two celebrations are common: the traditional wedding and the white wedding, sometimes days apart.

If you’re the guest from somewhere else

• Buy the aso ebi if you are offered it and wear it. It is how you show you belong to the day.
• Bring cash in small notes for spraying. It is the gift and the fun.
• Expect a long program and a late start. The food will be worth it.

A toast you could give

Short, warm, specific to the couple, and ending on the phrase. Swap in your own names and your own detail; the shape is what matters.

Tolu has planned every birthday I have had for ten years and never once let me help. Emeka, you have a planner for life. E ku ori ire. To both of you!